“The United States has been unable to issue visas to travelers around the world for two weeks because of a computer hardware failure that remains unresolved, State Department officials said Monday.

The country gets an average of 50,000 visa applications worldwide every day. The vast majority of those applications are piling up while the department tries to fix a hardware issue linked to biometric data. The failure prevented officials from processing and transmitting fingerprints and photographs for security checks.”

Source: Computer Failure Leaves State Dept. Unable to Issue Visas – The New York Times