More than a half dozen South and Central Florida mayors have hopped aboard a national travel industry campaign to persuade the U.S. State Department to speed up visa application interviews abroad for international travelers.
The U.S. Travel Association, a Washington-based trade group, rounded up signatures from 44 U.S. mayors last week including those from five South Florida cities as well as Miami-Dade County.
Industrywide concern over a continued lag in issuing international travel visas to U.S.-bound visitors has grown since the start of this year. For Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, it appeared to be the lone black mark in what was otherwise a record year for state visitations in 2022. The agency expressed dismay that the numbers of foreign visitors to the state and nation remain below pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, even though international travel has shown year-over-year improvements.
The 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 who seek to enter the United States “generally must first obtain a U.S. travel visa, which is placed in the traveler’s passport.” Most applicants between the ages of 14 and 79 must submit to interviews by a U.S. official at a local American embassy or consulate office. Travelers 80 and older and 13 and younger do not require interviews, according to the department website.
Trantalis told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the U.S. Travel Association reached out to individual mayors in cities that rely heavily on tourism.
“They sent an email to us asking us to sign onto this effort to help shorten the pace at which visas are issued to foreign tourists,” he said. “It does have a tremendous impact. South Florida depends on tourism — especially foreign tourism.”
“It’s important that the government officials are aware of the situation,” he added. “And secondly it’s important that we find a path to secure a better process for foreign tourists to come to our communities.”
No annual figures were immediately available for 2022 international tourism traffic in Broward County.
Babies arrive faster than visas
Tori Barnes, executive vice president for public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association, said the group published a news release on the top 10 things a person could do in a shorter time than obtain a visa.
“One of them is to have a baby,” Barnes said. In some cases, she added, “you can have two babies.”
Here’s a sampling of interview wait times, according to the State Department website:
Bogota — 872 days
Lima — 831 days
Mumbai — 696 days
Mexico City — 633 days
Rio de Janeiro — 455 days
Tel Aviv — 191 days
Blame on Washington
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 overseas travelers in 2022, an increase of 73% over 2021, but still lower than 2019 visitation levels,” the agency said. “The lack of overseas travelers is directly correlated to the unscientific vaccine mandate still instituted 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 back flights and Russia is still waging its war against Ukraine.
“You’ve got visas, inflation, fewer international flights and a war in Europe,” she said. “There are a bunch of reasons, and it’s not just the visa issue.”
The U.S. Travel Association acknowledges that the State Department has made some progress toward reducing wait times by opening overseas consulate offices on Saturdays, adding employees to help with processing, and waiving interviews for so-called low-risk renewals.
On its website, the State Department says the delays arose from “pent-up demand” for visas after many nations lifted their COVID-19 restrictions against travel. The department also cited traditional seasonal demand.
Goals for accountability
But Barnes asserted the department can do much better by setting firm goals for processing applications within a certain time.
“In 2019, forty-three percent of international inbound visitors came from countries that required a visa,” she said. Many of them were “really sought-after 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 at 10 straight years of growth.”
Then COVID-19 struck and “we saw what the world looks like when travel stops,” Barnes said. “It had negative impacts on communities and mental health and a whole [range of] different things,”
In the middle of last year, many countries dispensed with pre-departure COVID-19 testing for outbound flights.
In turn, the visa wait times for first-time visitor applicants “were really significant at our top inbound markets.”
Barnes said the association would like to see the State Department return by April to the processing times that were in place during the Obama Administration, which were “21 days or less” for the top markets to the U.S., such as Brazil, India and Mexico. Then, the association would like to have the improvements extended more globally by September.
Without any improvements this year, the association asserts the costs for American businesses could include 2.6 million lost visitors and $7 billion in traveler spending.
