Waiting times for visas to travel to the United States of up to 900 days were raised at the US Travel press conference at IPW 2024.
Speaking at the US Travel press conference, CEO Geoff Freeman said: When you look at travel as an export, before the pandemic, we had a $12bn travel trade surplus. At the end of last year, we had about a $50bn travel trade deficit. So, we have serious problems on the international inbound travel side that we have to resolve. Some of those problems are within our control, and some are outside our control. There’s not a whole lot we can do about the strength of our dollar or the limitations of flying over Russian airspace, which is a major inhibitor for bringing Asian travelers to the United States. However, there’s a lot we can do on issues that we can control, like visa wait times, customs inefficiencies, and the challenges travelers face when trying to make connections and having to rescreen their bags when coming into the United States.
Let’s talk about those areas where we can make a difference. On the visa side, I checked this morning, and if you’re in Colombia and want to come to the United States, the wait times are over 600 days to get an interview at a US Consulate. If you’re in Mexico, the wait times are over 800 days. If you’re in India, the wait times have reduced to 150 to 200 days, and if you’re in Brazil, what was 500 days is now 21 days. This shows us that it can be done when the State Department uses their ingenuity, gets creative, and puts resources in the right places. This problem can be solved, but it’s been going on for far too long and needs to be solved now. We have challenged the administration to set a goal of 30 days or less to process all visas at any consulate around the world.
On the customs side, too many travelers are waiting more than two hours to get into the United States after spending 10-14 hours on a flight just to land here. We can staff appropriately, use technology, and demonstrate a commitment to addressing these issues. When it comes to the rescreening of bags, something that many of you may experience when you land at LAX and want to transfer to another port in the United States, it is a massive inconvenience for travellers to go through customs, collect their bags, and then have to go rescreen their bags at the TSA checkpoint to make their connection. There are solutions, and it’s solutions that we are setting out to solve.
