There’s a good chance that Main Street in your hometown looks different from how it did three years ago, whether that’s in Illinois or elsewhere in the U.S. Perhaps your favorite restaurant has closed, or your barber never reopened after lockdowns. For communities whose economic success is tied to tourism and travel, the contrast is much grimmer. When the pandemic abruptly cut off the flow of travelers to the U.S., travel-dependent businesses such as hotels, tour services, museums and amusement parks — and the hundreds of thousands of jobs they support — were rendered inoperable.
With most COVID-19-related restrictions now lifted, one could expect these industries to get back on their feet and for tourism’s economic engine to fully restart.
But a procedural hurdle is holding up that recovery — one caused not by the pandemic but by bureaucratic red tape. Foreign travelers from key markets seeking to visit the U.S. are facing unimaginably long wait times for visas. The U.S. Travel Association has called this backlog a “de facto border closure,” with prospective visitors from top inbound markets waiting an average of more than 400 days before getting a visa interview.
