This week the US Travel Association reported the following: Tom Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said it was essential to “reduce the hassle factor” at welcoming points and said more improvements needed to be made.

Speaking at the International Pow Wow trade show in Orlando, Donohue admitted that the trauma of 9/11 had “left us less than hospitable to our foreigh visitors” but insisted “we are working to fix it”.

The US Chamber of Commerce has worked alongside the national tourism body US Travel and was instrumental in gaining approval for the US Travel Promotion Act.

Donohue said a survey carried out by US Travel and Oxford Economics revealed a 2.4 million decline in visitor numbers over the first 10 years of the millennium, and he added: “America cannot afford another lost decade”. “The message we need to get out there is that these destinations are still open for business,” he said.

To understand why foreign visitors are not coming to the US we simply need to take a look at our current visa policies.

Our current visa policy is strangling economic opportunity in the US, that flower if we made it easier for qualified visitors from Brazil, India, China and other non-visa waiver countries to visit the US.

The population of the 75 largest countries in the world including the US and our neighbors Mexico and Canada totals over 6 billion people. Nine of these countries, with a total population of 529 million people, are participants in the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Sixty-three “overseas” countries, with over 5 billion people, must go through the US Visa Application Process in order to gain entry into the US. The percentage of citizens from visa waiver countries who visit the US is twenty-seven times (27X) greater than the percentage of citizens from non visa waiver countries (2.7% of the citizens from visa waiver countries choose to visit the US each year vs. only .1% of the non-visa waiver countries).

Why 27X more?

The US Visa is a “product” that must be acquired for a non-visa waiver country citizen to visit the US. If the “product” is easy to acquire then people will be tempted to buy. However, if you have to wait for a US mandated visa interview appointment (a barrier) and then travel 1000 miles (a barrier) to be interviewed about your desire to “acquire the product” (the visa interview) all the while knowing there is a 20% chance that your attempt to acquire the product will fail (visa application rejection) you will be more likely to postpone the purchase decision or buy an alternative product (Europe as a destination). This is the dilemma facing each potential visa applicant with a desire to acquire the US visa “product”.

Creating jobs by opening our doors to qualified foreign tourists

The fastest way to grow jobs in the US is to make it easier for qualified visitors from other countries, specifically non-visa waiver countries like China, India and Brazil, to visit the US. This past year over 45 million Chinese traveled internationally but fewer than 1% chose to visit the US. Europe received 6X the number of Chinese visitors. The reason is our current mandatory visa interview policy. Since 9/11 non-immigrant visa applicants must be personally interviewed by a US consular officer in order to receive a US visa. However two barriers make this a daunting task for many, fully qualified, prospective visitors.

1.     First, is the issue of interview access. For example, China has 450 cities with over 500,000 people but only 3 cities with US Consular offices that conduct interviews for tour groups that wish to visit the US. Thus visa applicants must travel, in some cases over 1000 miles for a two or three minute interview.

2.     The second barrier is interview availability. A visa applicant is forced to wait, in some cases more than a month, for a visa interview appointment due to the shortage of US foreign service officers (FSO's) that conduct the in person interviews.

Both of these barriers can be overcome. First, the access barrier can be removed by simply permitting the FSO to conduct the mandatory visa interview via videoconference. Creating videoconferencing visa application centers would "localize" the visa application process eliminating the need to travel hundreds of miles or more for the visa interview. Second, State can use fee income to hire more FSO's. The visa application fee is $131 for non immigrant visa applicants. Given that an FSO interviews and approves from 100 to 120 visa applicants per day (2-3 minutes/interview; up to 20,000 visa approvals/yr) a newly hired FSO can generate $2.62 million in fee revenues ($131 X 20k applicants), more than enough to cover the fully deployed cost/FSO of $400k (per GAO).

The consequence of solving these barriers is a boom in travel industry hiring. According to the US Travel Association a foreign visitor spends, on average, $4500 when visiting the US. Also according to USTA, a new job is created with every $100,000 of foreign visitor spending. Thus a new job is created with every 22 foreign visitors ($100k/$4500). Since an FSO approves up to 20,000 visa applicants per year a single FSO is the gatekeeper authorizing $90 million in exports (foreign visitor spending) enabling the travel industry to hire 900 more US citizens in the hotel, restaurant, car rental, bus, train and airline industry.

For a variety of reasons some of the largest countries in the world, in fact most countries of the world, cannot or will not meet our Visa Waiver Program requirements. While the US intends to be open to citizens of most of the non-VWP countries, they will continue to need a US visa to visit. Since it was determined to be in our national self-interest to assist non-VWP citizens to visit the US, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the “Secure Borders and Open Doors” Policy on January 17, 2006:

Rice said the United States is exploring ways to use technology to transform traditional visa application methods and that later in 2006 the State Department will begin testing, through a pilot project in the United Kingdom, the use of videoconferencing technology to conduct visa interviews. “If we can do this successfully,” she said, “this process might make life dramatically easier for foreign citizens who must now travel great distances to be interviewed in person.” Speaking at a background briefing on the Rice-Chertoff initiative, a senior administration official described the situation facing prospective travelers in a large country such as Brazil, where the United States has only three consulates…Using digital videoconference technology to conduct visa interviews, the official said, “could be the biggest qualitative change in the way we handle visas in 150 years – it’s a generational shift.”[1]

Unfortunately, since the Rice-Chertoff Initiative videoconferencing recommendation was not implemented, the current visa application process continues to impose significant barriers that prevent potential visitors from even trying to apply for a US visa.I am working with the USTA and NTA to once again motivate Congress to put pressure on the State Department to implement the “Secure Borders and Open Doors” policy. We are making slow progress. The House has approved a pilot of videoconferencing visa interviews (HR 2410). The Senate is considering taking the same action (S.2971).If Congress approves videoconferencing visa interviews new jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans in our travel and services industry will be created (e.g. hiring 200 FSO's will create over 180,000 new jobs).

For a consumer economy currently being forced due to debt to stop consuming, increasing foreign visitor spending enables both interests (the need for consumer spending concurrent with the need for consumer saving) to be served. This is a “jobs, jobs, jobs” issue that needs to be raised with every member of Congress.