State Dept. Replaces Manual of Visa Guidance
On November 18, 2015, the Department of State (DOS) will replace the legacy Volume 9 of the Foreign Affairs Manual (9 FAM) with the 9 FAM-e. The 9 FAM-e will become the authoritative source for visa guidance.
DOS said the new 9 FAM-e represents the revision and reorganization of more than 4,000 pages of the legacy 9 FAM content that paralleled Volume 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The new 9 FAM-e overhauls language and organization, but not substance, DOS said. The former interpretive and procedural notes were merged, along with appendices. The new 9 FAM-e “adopts a hierarchical structure that is both more logical and better suited to modern search technologies,” DOS said, noting that the revised 9 FAM-e also uses a new citation system that is similar to the citation system used in other volumes of the FAM and the Foreign Affairs Handbook. DOS also has developed crosswalk tables correlating old citations with new, so that users can match new sections with former locations in the legacy FAM.
The announcement is in section F of the December 2015 Visa Bulletin.
