The United States Congress has allocated $50 million to the State Department to “reduce passport backlogs and reduce visa wait times” in a move hailed by the US Travel Association.
Over two years’ wait
In 2023, the USA issued a record-breaking 10.4 million visas and succeeded in cutting passport waiting times back to the pre-Covid-19 standard period of six to eight weeks for standard service and two to three weeks for the more expensive fast service. However waiting times for visas for first time visits to the US from top source markets such as Brazil, India, and Mexico, remain vastly in excess of this, according to the lobby group.
This is of particular concern ahead of the 2026 World Cup which will be hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada. The travel association’s Director of External Affairs, Megan Ryburn pointed out that “The World Cup is maybe 800 days away. With Colombia, that’s a real concern because right now, the average wait time for that particular market is around 725 days.”
Reacting to the bill, the travel association’s Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and Policy, Tori Emerson Barnes, said, “U.S. Travel applauds Congress for directing funding to address excessive visitor visa interview wait times, which currently average 400 days in top source markets.”
Long wait times for visas and passports risk deterring visitors and seeing them choose to travel elsewhere. “If you are a leisure traveler or a business traveler, you’re likely to say, ‘I’ll go somewhere else,’” said Geoff Freeman U.S. Travel CEO at last September’s Skift Global Forum.
“The State Department must now deploy these resources as quickly as possible to lower wait times and facilitate growth in inbound visitation,” Barnes noted.
A decade of major international events
The looming World Cup is not the only reason to act. What Barnes called “a decade of major international events” to come should be the impetus “to modernize the entire visa process,” she said.
The bill, signed into law by President Biden at the end of March, does not specify any category of visa application or country of origin to prioritise. Previous measures taken to accelerate the application process include not carrying out interviews for low-risk applicants, relocating visa processing staff to countries with large backlogs, and undertaking mass recruitment drives. These strategies have yielded welcome reductions in wait times in Brazil and India.
