As each year winds down, holiday celebrations, including Thanksgiving and Christmas, bring families together. With our mobile society, many return home from all around the globe.
For American citizens returning home, it’s a long flight, passport control at the airport, then a ride home. For those without a U.S. passport, wanting to visit friends and family in the U.S., the process is a nightmare, far more difficult than Kevin McCallister getting home after being stranded in NYC in Home Alone 2.
I am referring to the visa process which foreign nationals must navigate to travel to, or even transit through, the United States.
Tourist visas are called B1 or B2 visas and are used for non-U.S. residents desiring to travel to the U.S. to conduct business, attend a professional conference, visit family, or just take a vacation.
Residents of 41 specific countries are eligible for a visa waiver, allowing a 90-day stay in the U.S. for business or tourism without having to apply for a visa.
These countries are primarily first-world countries in Europe and a few in Asia and Oceania. Notably absent are countries in the Middle East, Africa, or South America.
One might consider this racist or xenophobic but there are also practical concerns over potential terrorism or visitors wanting to travel to the U.S. and never return to their home countries.
After recent events in Israel, this is more than just a passing concern. Not to the Department of Homeland Security however as millions of unvetted migrants are sashaying across the U.S. Southern border each year with the blessing and encouragement of the Biden administration.
Missing from the visa waiver program are the 150 remaining countries where most residents want to simply visit friends and family for the holidays, or otherwise travel to and spend money in New York, Las Vegas, or Miami. How can they get to the U.S.?
An interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate is required to obtain a travel visa. This should be easy and straightforward. It is anything but, a nightmare for visa applicants.
For some countries, the wait time a visa interview at a U.S. consulate might be days. For other countries, it can take years.
Current wait times for a visitor visa interview, according to the State Department are 459 days for Abu Dhabi, 686 days for Istanbul, 416 days for Lagos, and 849 days for Mexico City.
Ironically, one could take a bus or train from Mexico City to the Texas border and be in the U.S. within a few days.
Corporate media has little interest in visa delays, instead castigating all who advocate for border security as racists or xenophobes. The Wall Street Journal, in a random act of journalism, did weigh in a year ago,
The State Department has been struggling to keep up with visas since 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic forced the closing of U.S. consulates around the world, bringing the application process for entry into the country temporarily to a halt. Two and a half years later, some consulates are still offering only emergency appointments.
Though visa issuance has mostly rebounded to prepandemic levels, demand for visas is so high that appointments for anyone looking to apply are often booked months or even years out, and the Biden administration has faced mounting anger from business groups, Silicon Valley companies, universities, hospitals and the travel industry over the delays.
COVID is over, but the excuses persist.
A real-life example of how these delays affect visitors is a semi-retired Australian international businessman invited to a friend’s wedding in Seattle with 160 days advanced notice.
He was told he would have to wait anywhere from 216 to 300 days for a visa interview, meaning, he could not attend his friend’s wedding despite having spent a decade traveling around the world, including the U.S., on business.
Here are some hypothetical examples.
If a Lagos, Nigeria woman wants to visit her boyfriend in Atlanta or Denver and she will have to wait 416 days just for an embassy appointment. A family from Bogota, Colombia hoping to visit Disney World will wait 760 days for their visa appointment. A physician in Mumbai, India wanting to attend an American medical conference won’t get an appointment for 491 days, long after the medical meeting is over.
The irony is that if that same physician, family, or woman made their way to the U.S. Southern border, they could waltz across, and if even apprehended crossing, they could claim persecution, ask for asylum, and be granted entry into the U.S. They would also receive a welcome basket of goodies including food stamps, Medicaid health insurance, Social Security income, and other forms of assistance, including free education for their children.
How about a personal example?
My son’s girlfriend is Nigerian. She owns a travel tour company and has visited many countries in the EU, Middle East, and Africa, without overstaying any visa. Yet she cannot obtain a tourist visa for the U.S. The consulate gives no reason, other than a “no.”
As such, my family and I are traveling to Mexico, where she can travel, so she can spend Thanksgiving with our family. How much easier it would be for everyone if she could simply come to the U.S. and spend Thanksgiving with my family at home. We will spend money in Mexico rather than in the U.S. over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Why does the State Department not fix this? The U.S. economy would benefit, a good thing considering its current state.
Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers over $100 billion a year, yet tourism nets the U.S. more than $1 trillion a year, a ten-fold plus difference to the U.S. economy. Why are we making it so difficult to visit and stimulate our economy?
Can this be fixed, assuming the Biden admiration wants to fix this? Why would they not want to streamline the visitor visa process?
Visitors visit, then go home. Illegal migrants come to America and stay, and perhaps vote. According to the Verifythis website, “Undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens can’t vote for federal or state offices, but they can vote for local offices in more than a dozen municipalities.”
Since when do Democrats follow rules? There are allegations of more votes cast than there are registered voters in particular jurisdictions, so why would illegal migrants not be registered and have their ballots counted?
If the Biden administration did want to solve visitor visa delays, they could hold interviews virtually via Zoom or another similar platform, clearing the backlog, allowing foreigners to travel to America to visit, celebrate, holiday, and spend their money on American goods and services?
For an interview lasting three to five minutes, an embassy could perform 10 interviews per hour, 80 per day, 400 per week. More than 100 embassies, or 40,000 interviews, could be conducted each week, clearing and eliminating any backlog. The U.S. has more than 250 embassies and consulates worldwide.
Yet the Biden administration allows millions of illegal migrants to enter the U.S. each year, most unable to speak English, without skills, carrying diseases, now living in American hotels at taxpayer expense with no plans to return home or assimilate into American culture.
Individuals from foreign countries, seeking to visit the U.S. legally, playing by the rules, and spending their own money while in the U.S. are told to wait in a multi-year line. At the same time, those entering the country illegally, not playing by the rules, not stimulating the U.S. economy, are enjoying the largess of U.S. taxpayers, and are shuttled to the front of the line.
Is this incompetence? Or a planned and coordinated Cloward-Piven strategy to undermine America? You decide.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer.
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