While domestic travel is beginning to return to pre-pandemic levels in the United States, the number of international visitors is declining. International arrivals in the country in 2022 fell nearly 40% compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the National Travel and Tourism Office, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
One of the reasons believed to be behind the reduction in international tourism is the long waiting list for tourist and business visa issuance at U.S. consulates and embassies in various parts of the world.
Brazil, India, Mexico, and Colombia – where visa applicants are facing the worst delays – are among the top sources of international visitors to the United States, according to data from the National Travel and Tourism Office.
Applicants from Brazil and Mexico need to wait over a year to have the necessary interview for their visa. In Colombia, the wait extends until 2025.
In 2020, U.S. consulates worldwide closed their operations and stopped processing applications as the coronavirus spread. When applications began to arrive again, staff found themselves overwhelmed.
“Even before the pandemic, countries like Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and India were our largest operations in the world. That’s why we increased the number of staff in those locations,” said Julie M. Stufft, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services, in an interview with The New York Times. “We issued more tourist visas last year in places like Mexico and Brazil than before the pandemic. This year, that will happen in India.”
The State Department said it aims to reach pre-pandemic staffing levels at U.S. consulates abroad by the end of September.
Meanwhile, the government has been taking steps to alleviate the delays. For example, last year, the State Department waived the interview requirement for those who had visas in the last two years.
Tourism Industry Pressure
International visitors contributed $239 billion to the U.S. economy before the pandemic. This fell to $83 billion in 2021, according to the latest available data from the National Travel and Tourism Office.
The tourism industry is pressuring the government to do more about the delays.
“We have people who want to come and spend their money here, and we are basically putting a ‘Keep Out’ sign in front of them. We are essentially saying that America is closed for business to these travelers. And that is remarkably damaging,” said Geoff Freeman, head of the U.S. Travel Association, to The NY Times.
Congress has also gotten involved. A bipartisan group of six senators wrote a letter in February to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, asking that the issue of visa delays be addressed.
“While more visitors from across the country are coming to Nevada and helping our tourism industry recover, international visit numbers continue to lag behind pre-Covid levels. We have more work to do to bring back international tourists,” said Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada who chairs the Senate tourism subcommittee and one of the lawmakers who signed the letter.
Bruno Da Costa, who leads Global Leaders Experience, a Brazilian company that runs an experience program for C-suite executives, says that in each of the two to three trips to the United States that the program conducts each year, 40 to 50 executives visit companies, attend networking events, and explore cities in their free time.
“If the border is closing, we need to adapt and redirect our participants to another country,” Da Costa told The NY Times.
Source: The New York Times