North Miami-Dade News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On August 4, 2023, Reps. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Susie Lee (D-NV) reintroduced a bipartisan bill to reduce the years-long wait times for visitor (nonimmigrant) visa appointments in the U.S. State Department, the Visitor Visa Wait Time Reduction Act.

We are currently experiencing historic backlogs for tourist visas to the United States. Many prospective tourists to the United States have to wait 2.5+ years just to get an appointment to see if they are eligible for a tourist visa. This hurts our economy and is keeping families from seeing their loved ones.

To solve this, the bill requires the State Department to outline specific steps to address this problem at each diplomatic post where the wait time for a visitor visa appointment exceeds 100 days. To directly reduce wait times, it also temporarily reassigns staff from other State Department offices to diplomatic posts where the wait time for a nonimmigrant visa appointment exceeds 300 days.

“Many of my constituents have families who live across the Americas who have to wait egregiously long amounts of time to see their loved ones in the U.S.,” said Rep. Salazar. “The bureaucratic breakdown of consular services at the State Department needs to be fixed immediately. No more excuses – get to work to bring these wait times down!”

“Las Vegas is the travel and tourism capital of the world – our city attracts millions of international travelers and receives an economic boost of billions of dollars from tourism each year,” said Rep. Lee. “But with tourist visa processing wait times often spanning multiple years, places like Las Vegas are seeing less travelers and less business, hampering economic growth and also preventing many Nevadans from welcoming their family members from across the globe to celebrate some of life’s biggest moments. I’m proud to stand with Congresswoman Salazar to introduce this bipartisan, common-sense legislation to improve processing capacity, clear the visitor visa backlog, and support our travel and tourism industry.”

Cosponsors of the Visitor Visa Wait Time Reduction Act include Reps. Susie Lee (D-NV), Carol Miller (R-WV), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Dina Titus (D-NV), Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Daniel Goldman (D-NY), Amata Radewagen (R-AS), Jill Tokuda (D-HI), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), Patrick Ryan (D-NY), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Ed Case (D-HI), Andre Carson (D-IN), David Trone (D-MD), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jenniffer González-Colón (R-PR), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Daniel Webster (R-FL), Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL).

This legislation is also supported by the U.S. Travel Association.

The full text of the bill can be found here.

BACKGROUND

In the wake of extended shutdowns at U.S. embassies around the world, the State Department accumulated very long wait times for nonimmigrant visas, in some cases over two years. These wait times are preventing people around the world from visiting family members in the country and are costing the U.S. economy billions.

Currently, the average wait time for nonimmigrant visa appointments is about 250 days, but in some embassies, it is much longer. Wait times in Latin American countries are particularly long. For example, in Bogota, Colombia, and Mexico City, Mexico, wait times stretch for longer than two years.

Original source can be found here.