The mayor of San Francisco joined the call for expedited travel visas

More than 40 mayors from cities across the country called on the State Department this week to speed up the visitor visa process for international travelers.

• London Bridge, the mayor of San Francisco, is among those calling for a resolution to the controversies surrounding the pandemic.

Why is it important? In the year It could cause more than 2.5 million people to forgo travel to the United States by 2023, causing a loss of nearly $7 billion in revenue to the domestic economy, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

• Long waiting times cause people to miss out on important life events, such as a child’s graduation or birth.

What they say: “These delays are essentially a travel ban — no one is waiting 1-2 years to interview a US government official for permission to visit the United States,” Geoff Freeman, CEO of the US Travel Association, told Axios in an email.

• “Millions of visitors simply choose other destinations – destinations that compete more effectively for their business.”

Details: In April, the mayors said they wanted the visa process to be less than 21 days for people coming for “inbound travel from top countries”. And by September, the expectation is that interview times for 80% of applicants globally will be three weeks or less.

• The mayors asked the State Department to increase staffing at consulates and extend the interview waiver for renewal applicants deemed to be “low risk” in light of the high number of applicants.

In numbers: Today, a visa interview can take more than a year in some major markets, like Mexico City, where the current wait time is 633 days.

• Yes, but: The State Department told USA Today that the average wait time for an interview is down from 120 days last summer to about seven weeks.

Note: Travelers from countries like Australia, Japan and much of Europe do not need a visa to visit the US.

• But according to the US Travel Association, In 2019, 43% of international travelers came from visa-required countries, driving $120 billion on US soil.

Be smart. Excessive visa delays are the result of pandemic-related staff cuts at US consulates and an increase in international travel since borders reopened, the American Travel Association told Axios.

Game Mode: Processing times for certain types of visas for students and temporary workers have been reduced, which the mayors said gives them hope that the same can be done for travelers.

• A State Department spokesperson told USA Today that It announced that it had completed 90 percent of the “pre-pandemic 2019 nonimmigrant visa rate” in fiscal year 2022 and plans to complete more in 2023.

Present: San Francisco has an estimated 1.5 million international travelers by 2022, a 163 percent increase from last year, according to SF Travel.

• Still, last year’s count of international travelers was half of the 3 million who visited in 2019 before the outbreak.
• “Long visa wait times are a serious impediment to our continued tourism recovery,” SF Travel CEO Joe D’Alessandro told Axios in an email.