Pakistan visa from the United States

If you are trying to work out where to hand in a Pakistani visa application, stop looking. There is no counter to hand it to. The Government of Pakistan ended manual visa processing, and every category now runs through the online portal at visa.nadra.gov.pk.

The consulates still matter, but their role changed. They check documents, answer questions about categories and deal with cases the portal cannot resolve. They do not take a paper application across a desk.

Which visa, and what the portal will ask you for

The online form covers the requirements common to everyone. What follows is what each category adds on top, and it is where most applications stall.

Visit or tourist visa

A signed invitation letter from your host or sponsor in Pakistan, with a photocopy of their Pakistani ID, their address and a telephone number.
An employment verification letter, or a letter of introduction from your employer or educational institution.
Your last three months of bank statements.
Proof of residence: a state ID, a driver's licence, or a recent utility bill.
For trekking or mountaineering, an invitation from a Pakistani tour operator, that operator's registration letter, and the expedition permit from the Gilgit-Baltistan Council.

For a child under 16, a notarised parental consent form, the parent's current ID and the child's birth certificate. The notarisation is not optional.

Family visit visa

This is the route for Pakistani Americans, for people of Pakistani origin, and for their spouses and children. What it asks for is proof of the link rather than proof of the trip.

A copy of your latest Pakistani passport, CNIC or NICOP. An expired one is accepted here, which is not true of most other procedures.
If you hold no Pakistani document of your own, your birth certificate together with a parent's Pakistani passport or ID, valid or expired.
If the link is through marriage, the marriage certificate and your spouse's Pakistani document.
Children attach their birth certificate plus one parent's Pakistani document.

Two things worth knowing before you start

The consulate may ask for more. The published lists are a floor, not a ceiling, and the officer handling your case can request additional documents. Building a week of slack into your plans costs nothing.

Expired Pakistani documents work for the family visa and almost nowhere else. If your NICOP has lapsed, you can still use it to prove origin for this visa, but you cannot use it to renew a passport. Those are different systems with different rules.

Which office is yours, and why it barely matters here

For most procedures the answer decides your whole day, because you can only apply where you live. Pakistan divides the United States between five offices under a Ministry circular dated September 2012: New York takes eleven states, Los Angeles ten, Chicago twelve, Houston ten, and the Embassy in Washington the remaining eight plus the District.

Visas are the exception that proves the rule. Since the portal replaced the counter, the geography stopped mattering for the application itself. It still matters if your case needs a conversation, and then the jurisdiction applies like everywhere else.

Common reasons an application stalls

The invitation letter has no ID attached. A letter on its own is not enough; the host's Pakistani identity document has to come with it.
Bank statements are short of three months. Two months of statements is a resubmission.
The parental consent form is signed but not notarised. For under-16s this is checked every time.
Proof of residence is missing. A passport is not proof of where you live. A driver's licence, a state ID or a recent utility bill is.

If you also need Pakistani documents

People applying for a family visit visa often discover they need other things at the same time. A lapsed NICOP does not block this visa, and it does block a passport renewal, so the two run on different clocks. If both are on your list, start the NADRA card first: it takes between two and six weeks depending on the track you pay for, and the passport cannot move until it is done.