Applicants to the Italian Consulate General in New York say their passports have been held for up to six weeks—triple the advertised timeframe—according to new posts on r/SchengenVisa. One user who applied on 3 February still had an un-cashed money order and no tracking update as of 15 March, despite assurances from visa officers that the document would be mailed back well before 1 March travel. The New York mission processed more than 47,000 short-stay visas in 2025, making it Italy’s third-busiest consular post worldwide.
![Italian Consulate in New York faces scrutiny as applicants wait weeks for passport return]()
For applicants seeking a smoother path, services like VisaHQ can step in to handle the paperwork and liaise with consulates on your behalf. The platform’s dedicated Italy page (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) lists up-to-date requirements, offers document pre-checking, and can arrange expedited courier return of passports—helpful when local backlogs threaten upcoming travel.
A surge in spring-break tourism and early summer school programmes appears to have coincided with a partial outage of the Visa Information System (VIS-IT) in February, creating a processing backlog that staff are still clearing. Applicants report receiving only generic “under review” emails when requesting status updates. For U.S. companies rotating staff through Italian subsidiaries, the situation underscores the importance of contingency planning: corporate travellers should secure multi-entry Schengen visas well ahead of renewal dates and consider alternative routing through consulates in Washington DC, Miami or Chicago where appointment availability remains healthier. Immigration counsel also recommend attaching proof of imminent travel (conference tickets, hotel bookings) to trigger priority handling. Consular modernisation is on the horizon. A draft bill currently before the Italian Senate would centralise North American visa intake under a single processing hub in Rome, with biometric collection outsourced locally—a model already used by France and Spain. Until then, applicants are advised to monitor USPS tracking daily and engage congressionally-certified courier services if critical passports risk being stranded.
For applicants seeking a smoother path, services like VisaHQ can step in to handle the paperwork and liaise with consulates on your behalf. The platform’s dedicated Italy page (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) lists up-to-date requirements, offers document pre-checking, and can arrange expedited courier return of passports—helpful when local backlogs threaten upcoming travel.
A surge in spring-break tourism and early summer school programmes appears to have coincided with a partial outage of the Visa Information System (VIS-IT) in February, creating a processing backlog that staff are still clearing. Applicants report receiving only generic “under review” emails when requesting status updates. For U.S. companies rotating staff through Italian subsidiaries, the situation underscores the importance of contingency planning: corporate travellers should secure multi-entry Schengen visas well ahead of renewal dates and consider alternative routing through consulates in Washington DC, Miami or Chicago where appointment availability remains healthier. Immigration counsel also recommend attaching proof of imminent travel (conference tickets, hotel bookings) to trigger priority handling. Consular modernisation is on the horizon. A draft bill currently before the Italian Senate would centralise North American visa intake under a single processing hub in Rome, with biometric collection outsourced locally—a model already used by France and Spain. Until then, applicants are advised to monitor USPS tracking daily and engage congressionally-certified courier services if critical passports risk being stranded.
