Mr. Ronnie Millar:

I thank the members for their kind words about the J1 programme. As I said earlier, it is an important programme for young people. The feedback that we are getting from the Department of State is that the overseas embassies such as in Dublin and Belfast will prioritise US citizens because there is so much of a backlog in terms of processing work for US citizens. It is really unclear when the non-immigrant visas, like the J1 visas, will start to be processed after the travel restrictions are lifted. With such a backlog, we do not have clarity. Of course, with the J1 visa, the eligibility is 12 months after graduation, so with each month that passes, a number of students become ineligible for the visa programme. We are really not clear on how long the backlog will take to clear but we have started to accept applications. We will work with students to ensure that all of their paperwork and applications are prepared and in the pipeline for when the embassies can process the paperwork.