Medellin Colombia - How long from "ISSUED" to receipt of VISA?

[DavidBoston 9]

Can anyone from Medellin Colombia please tell me how long it took from the "ISSUED" status until you received the email from the ASC in Medellin? Our CEAC status changed to "ISSUED" last Thursday, November 19th. Was hoping to have fiance here for Thanksgiving, but not looking that way now!!

Thanks very much !!

David

[Russ&Caro 1,548]

Here's a sort of catch-all thread for applicants from Colombia. If you look at the timelines of the participants in this thread you can get a good idea of the waiting time. Some of us were caught in a 4 week system outage for printing visas and it took up to 5 or 6 weeks from CEAC Issued to visa in hand. A more normal waiting time is around 2 weeks. Good luck!

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/546895-colombia-are-you-waiting-for-scheduling-of-interview-in-bogota/

[DavidBoston 9]

Here's a sort of catch-all thread for applicants from Colombia. If you look at the timelines of the participants in this thread you can get a good idea of the waiting time. Some of us were caught in a 4 week system outage for printing visas and it took up to 5 or 6 weeks from CEAC Issued to visa in hand. A more normal waiting time is around 2 weeks. Good luck!

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/546895-colombia-are-you-waiting-for-scheduling-of-interview-in-bogota/

Thanks for the information. I remember hearing about the system outage.

But I am surprised that it takes 2 weeks from "ISSUED" to receipt of Passport/VISA. It seems like I read a lot of postings in VJ where some people are getting their VISAs in 2 or 3 days after the CEAC changes that status to ISSUED. This wait is torture !!

Thanks again.

[Russ&Caro 1,548]

I'm guessing that some embassies are rather speedy, but you have to remember that there are a lot of steps. Someone in some thread outlined all of them but this is at least a partial list of things they have to do...

1. Submit the visa for printing to the State Dept.

2. The State Dept has a software system that enters the visa info (this was the system with a 4 week outage)

3. The State Dept system conducts some sort of background check.

4. The system then prints the visa and it is assembled within your passport as a separate page

5. The embassy then notifies the carrier that the visa/passport is ready for shipment

6. The carrier picks it up and sends it to their office in your city.

And there are wait times and sometimes a backlog queue for each one of these steps.

[DavidBoston 9]

Hey thanks very much for that information. Does anyone know at what point in the process they change the status to issued? I thought I read that it was after printing the VISA.

And I would think that they would certainly have done all background checks before declaring it issued. So maybe just those last couple of steps are left.

I am also thinking that maybe the courier doesn't leave from Bogota to Medellin daily, but only once a week. Who knows? So all we can do is wait!

[DavidBoston 9]

WE GOT THE VISA. ?????