More than half a dozen South and Central Florida mayors have joined a national travel industry campaign to persuade the U.S. State Department to speed up overseas visa application interviews for international travelers.
The US Travel Association, a Washington-based trade group, collected signatures from 44 US mayors last week, including those from five South Florida cities as well as Miami-Dade County.
Worldwide industry concern over a persistent delay in issuing international travel visas to visitors traveling to the US has grown since the start of this year. For Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, it appeared to be the only black spot in what was otherwise a record year for state visits in 2022. The agency expressed concern that the number of foreign visitors to the state and the nation remains below levels. of the COVID-19 pandemic, although international travel has shown year-over-year improvements.
Mayors whose signatures were sent to Washington on Monday include Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale, Josh Levy of Hollywood and Scott Singer of Boca Raton. Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County also signed the petition, as did Anne Gerwig of Wellington, Karen Lythgoe of Lantana and Betty Resch of Lake Worth Beach.
From Central Florida, Mayors Buddy Dyer of Orlando and Jerry Demings of Orange County also signed on behalf of their tourism-sensitive jurisdictions, according to the association.
According to the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, citizens of foreign countries seeking to enter the United States “generally must obtain a U.S. travel visa, which is placed in the traveler’s passport.” Most applicants between the ages of 14 and 79 must be interviewed by a US official at a local US embassy or consulate. Travelers 80 and older and 13 and older do not require interviews, according to the department’s website.
Trantalis told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the US Travel Association reached out to individual mayors in cities that rely heavily on tourism.
“They sent us an email asking us to sign on to this effort to help reduce the rate at which visas are issued to foreign tourists,” he said. “It has a tremendous impact. South Florida depends on tourism – especially foreign tourism.
“It is important that government officials are aware of the situation,” he added. “And secondly it’s important that we find a way to provide a better process for foreign tourists to come to our communities.”
No annual figures were immediately available for 2022 international tourism traffic to Broward County.
Babies arrive faster than visas
Tori Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the US Travel Association, said the group released a news release on the top 10 things a person can do in less time than getting a visa.
“One of them is having a baby,” Barnes said. In some cases, she added, “you can have two children.”
Here is a sample interview wait time, according to the State Department’s website:
Bogota – 872 days
Lima – 831 days
Mumbai – 696 days
Mexico City – 633 days
Rio de Janeiro – 455 days
Tel Aviv – 191 days
Washington is to blame
In a report on 2022 statewide tourism traffic released last week, Visit Florida took aim at the Biden Administration for the slow pace of processing visa applications.
“Florida welcomed a total of 7 million out-of-state travelers in 2022, a 73% increase over 2021 but still below 2019 visitation levels,” the agency said. “The lack of overseas travelers is directly related to the unscientific vaccine mandate yet to be created by the Biden administration, in addition to staggering visa wait times.”
But Stacy Ritter, president and CEO of Visit Lauderdale, the tourism marketing and promotion agency for Broward County, said the problems go beyond visa delays. For example, airlines have cut flights and Russia is still waging its war against Ukraine.
“You have visas, inflation, fewer international flights and a war in Europe,” she said. “There are a number of reasons, and it’s not just the visa issue.”
The US Travel Association acknowledges that the State Department has made some progress toward reducing wait times by opening overseas consulate offices on Saturdays, adding staff to help with processing and waiving interviews for so-called renewals. low risk.
On its website, the State Department says the delays stemmed from “suppressed demand” for visas after many countries lifted their COVID-19 restrictions against travel. The department also cited traditional seasonal demand.
Accountability goals
But Barnes said the department could do much better by setting firm goals for processing applications within a certain time frame.
“In 2019, forty-three percent of international visitors came from visa-requiring countries,” she said. Many of these were “really demanding visitors” who were real estate investors and retail consumers.
“At that time we had a significant positive impact on the trade balance,” she said. “We were in 10 consecutive years of growth.”
Then COVID-19 hit, and “we saw what the world looks like when travel stops,” Barnes said. “There have been negative impacts on the community and mental health as a whole [range of] different things,”
In the middle of last year, many countries waived pre-departure COVID-19 testing for outbound flights.
On the other hand, visa wait times for first-time visitor applicants “were really significant in our key inbound markets.”
Barnes said the association would like the State Department to return by April to the processing times in place during the Obama administration, which were “21 days or less” for key U.S. markets such as Brazil, India and Mexico. . The association would then like the improvements to be rolled out more globally by September.
Without any improvements this year, the association says the costs to American businesses could include 2.6 million lost visitors and $7 billion in travel expenses.
