Consulate for US expands in Shanghai

SHANGHAI - The US Consulate General in Shanghai is adding to its facilities to meet the rapidly increasing stream of US visa applications it processes.

"We recently signed a lease to expand our consular facility by increasing the number of interview windows from nine to 20. Then we can interview more applicants on a daily basis," said Robert Griffiths, US consul-general in Shanghai.

By Wednesday, US consular officers in China - the embassy in Beijing and consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang, and Chengdu - had processed more than 1 million non-immigrant visa applications this year, 30 percent of them in Shanghai.