Visa Hindrances Hurting US Economic Growth
February 17, 2012 – Though the United States is on the lookout for more international travelers wanting to visit the country, many international travelers are still faced with immigration difficulties.
One part of these immigration hindrances is the snag that tourist and business people face while obtaining a US visa to enter the US.
In some parts of the world, US visa application still has waiting times of almost a year.
With this to consider, the US tourism industry has been pushing the State Department to streamline the USA visa application process, as billions of dollars and millions of potential American jobs are in play.
In the first 10 months of last year alone, overseas visitors had sunk in well over $100bn into the US economy.
Though international visitors’ spending has returned to where it was before the 2008 global financial collapse, due to tough American visa rules introduced in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 attacks, it had reduced the over-all number of international visitors to the US in a decade from 17% to 12% and this is hurting US tourism jobs.
And for countries like Brazil and China which have plenty of money to spend and with both countries’ outbound travel forecasted to grow 38% and 151% respectively in the next 10 years, having these prospective tourists to wait up to a year for clearance to the US would often lead tourists to look elsewhere.
Thus, the US travel industry is lobbying Congress to make Brazil one of the more than 30 countries in the visa-waiver scheme and it’s calling for lengthier visas to be given to Chinese travelers.
In the last fiscal year, there were more than a million USA visa applications in China and more than 800,000 in Brazil. And these United States visa had brought visitors and spending to the United States.
Though the State Department says security is their top priority, they are still well aware of the economic implications of streamlining USA visa application processing. They have been moving staff into vetting positions at US embassies as fast as they can.
Source:
usimmigration.com
