Visa Backlog in Brazil, Colombia, India and Mexico Takes Toll in U.S.

The department has also waived the interview requirement for those who had a visa in the past two years, a solution Ms. Stufft said was the “preferred way to mitigate wait times” over options like doing interviews over video.

All other applicants still require an interview.

A ‘Keep Out’ sign for foreign tourists

While domestic travel is starting to return to prepandemic levels, international visitor numbers are still lagging. International arrivals into the United States in 2022 continued to be down nearly 40 percent from prepandemic levels, according to data from the National Travel and Tourism Office, a part of the Department of Commerce.

Brazil, India, Mexico and Colombia — where applicants are currently experiencing the worst delays — are among the top sources of international visitors to the United States, according to National Travel and Tourism Office data. More than 2.4 million visitor visas were granted to citizens of these four nations in fiscal 2019, the last year of prepandemic travel, State Department data shows.

International visitors contributed $239 billion to the U.S. travel economy before the pandemic. This fell to $83 billion in 2021, according to the latest available data from the National Travel and Tourism Office.

The travel industry is pushing the administration to do more about the backlog.

“We have people that want to come and spend their money here and we’re basically putting in front of them a ‘Keep Out’ sign. We’re basically saying America is closed for business to these travelers. And that is remarkably detrimental and shortsighted,” said Geoff Freeman, head of the U.S. Travel Association, a trade group.

Congress has also gotten involved. A bipartisan group of six senators wrote a letter in February to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, asking it to address the issue of visa delays.

“While more visitors from across the country are coming to Nevada and helping our tourism industry bounce back, international visitation numbers continue to lag behind pre-Covid levels. We have more work to do to bring back international tourists,” said Jacky Rosen, Democrat of Nevada, who heads the Senate tourism subcommittee and was one of the lawmakers who signed the letter.