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Friday, 26.04.2024, 11:18
Lithuanian visa wait times increase to a month as applications double
"With emigration growing and the economy recovering, the need for
workers increases. Lithuanians leave and foreigners are needed (to fill the
labor shortage)," Evelina Gudzinskaite,
the department's director, told BNS.
"The demand is constantly growing, but staff numbers at our department
and other services dealing with this issue are not. The problem has been
mounting up. The number of national visa applications filed during this
half-year reached last year's annual level," she said.
According to Gudzinskaite, the department, which has been asking for a
staff increase since 2015, is trying to find simpler procedural solutions on
visa issuance in an effort to resolve the situation. Also, the Interior
Ministry has agreed on the need to change the rules for issuing visas to
facilitate the process.
Meanwhile, the situation is likely to get even worse, the director said.
"Currently, one has to wait about a month. Normally, a national visa
should be issued within 15 calendar days. This period may be extended in
complex cases," she said.
The director advises filing visa applications online and submitting
documents to territorial migration offices, rather than to the Migration
Department in Vilnius.
Some 3,225 national visa applications were received in Lithuania's
territory between Jan. 1 and Aug. 29, 2017, or an average of 15 applications
per working day. This is up from 2,011 applications in the full year 2015, or
eight per day, and 2,013 in the full year 2016, or twelve per day.