Since winning the elections last year, the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been analyzing the possibility of reinstating visa requirements for American citizens visiting Brazil.
This requirement has been suspended since June 2019, when then-President Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree stating that the Brazilian government would no longer require visas from Americans traveling to Brazil for tourism, business, transit, and artistic or sporting activities, for stays of up to 90 days.
Bolsonaro’s government argued that the measure would stimulate tourism in Brazil. The decision applied not only to Americans but also to Japanese, Australians, and Canadians, who can also travel to Brazil without a visa.
However, Bolsonaro’s decision broke with the principle of reciprocity historically adopted by Brazilian diplomacy, as the countries involved did not offer the same benefits to Brazilian tourists.
The exemption from visas for foreigners was a long-standing demand of the Brazilian tourism industry, but it had never been implemented mainly due to opposition from the Itamaraty. The agency argues that the measure, without reciprocity, weakens Brazil in relation to the countries involved.
Economy versus Diplomacy
The Lula government seems to want to prioritize diplomacy. As soon as the elections were over, Lula’s transition team began a study on the effects of this visa exemption measure and recommended that the government revoke Bolsonaro’s measure within the first hundred days of the new presidency.
The current team’s argument is that the measure, in addition to going against the principle of reciprocity, did not result in any type of gain for tourism. On the contrary, it meant a significant loss of consular revenue.
However, tourism experts claim that the government does not have a database to support this assertion, as the visa exemption measure was adopted in June 2019 and in March 2020, global tourism ceased due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and has not yet fully resumed.
Moreover, these experts still question when such reciprocity will be possible concerning the United States, in particular. The number of Brazilians attempting to immigrate illegally to the country in recent years is a reason to inhibit any attempt at visa exemption by the American government.
Source: uol.com.br and BBC.com