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DUBAI - The US Consulate in Dubai has set up a separate online visitor visa appointment system only for Iranians residing both in the UAE and Iran, following complaints of mass booking which posed serious problems for legitimate Emirati and other UAE travellers.
The diplomatic mission has now warned that if it detects any mass bookings, it would cancel all appointments and would not reinstate them.
The consulate officials in the UAE said the separate Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) appointment system for Iranians was set up last month, after it noticed travel agents, based in Iran, mass booking appointments for Iranians under false names and selling the appointment times for exorbitant sums of money, which ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Due to the absence of an American mission in Iran, Iranians have the option of applying for visas in the UAE, besides other countries. All applicants have to pay only one-time, non refundable fee of $131 (approximately Dh480) for the visa application.
To obtain any kind of visa to the US, appointments have to be booked online, after which the applicants would have to come to the mission for an interview on the set date.
Steven L. Pike, Counsellor for Press and Cultural Affairs at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, explained that agents were booking and selling several appointments for a given day, under the previous system, despite no fee to block appointments.
Though it was a single booking system for Emiratis, other UAE residents and Iranians, the timings for Iranians were separate as Farsi-speaking staff at the mission had to interview them. The number of appointments varies everyday depending on the number of staff available at the mission.
"They (agents) would book all appointments for the day allotted to Iranians and then start booking appointments meant for Emiratis and UAE residents using fraudulent names," said Pike. After selling them, the agents might alter the names to those of the Iranian travellers.
"This blocking of the system by illegal and dishonest means is basically violating the individual process," noted the spokesperson.
He added that there were also instances of applicants not showing up despite mass bookings, which was also preventing genuine travellers from a fair chance to an appointment.
Pike said, "Following the creation of a separate system for Iranians, incidents of mass booking have come down. We can usually detect where the appointments are being booked and when we found cases of mass booking, we cancelled them."
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