Jamaicans applying for United States visas will likely be able to pay the required fees online within a year, according to Ambassador Janice Jacobs, acting assistant secretary for consular affairs.

Ambassador Jacobs said the online payment option is now being tested at two of the United States' embassies in Mexico.

"In the future, we're going to allow people, when they make their appointment, to also pay online for the visa processing fee that we charge," Ambassador Jacobs told journalists during a lunch hosted by US Ambassador to Jamaica Brenda LaGrange Johnson at her official residence in Kingston yesterday.

Asked how soon the service would be made available to other countries, Jacobs said, "We are just now beginning to pilot that. I would say it would be a year before it becomes available."

The pilot project, Jacobs said, was part of efforts by the US State Department to make the visa application process easier and more convenient, especially given the large volume of applications now being received at US consulates worldwide.

Jacobs said that last year, US consular officers worldwide conducted 8 1/2 million visa application interviews and issued approximately six million visas. Of that number, 651,000 were student visas.

Her colleague, Ed Wehrli, the US consul general in Jamaica, also said that last fiscal year (October 1, 2006 - September 30, 2007) the consulate in Kingston handled just under 105,000 non-immigrant visa cases, 13,000 more than it did in the previous year.

Ambassador Jacobs is in Jamaica to observe the operations of the US Consulate, get to know the staff and also to look at any particular concerns or issues to give feedback to the State Department which will address the issues.

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