What is an SAO?
Once a consular officer makes a determination that a visa applicant may be ineligible to enter the United States based on a security-related concern, the officer requests an SAO from the Coordination Division of the DOS. Upon request from a U.S. consulate, the DOS will initiate the process of requesting clearances from various government agencies, which may include the FBI, CIA, Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Commerce, Office of Foreign Asset Control, Interpol, the national criminal and law enforcement databases, the DOS Bureau of Non-Proliferation, and others. The consulate cannot issue a visa until receiving a response from the DOS. United States consulates have for some months been in a heightened state of security consciousness and have been requesting SAOs with considerable frequency (the DOS processed more than 260,000 SAOs in 2008, and the number last year was undoubtedly higher). We are therefore seeing a very high number of visa application delays of this type at the m
