Despite reopening, the U.S. is still closed to many

NEW YORK — The U.S. says that it’s inviting the global community to visit now that the government has ended the ban on travelers from 33 countries.

In reality, however, it will still be difficult — if not impossible — for much of the globe to enter the country and experts say it will take years for travel to fully recover.

For starters, half the world isn’t vaccinated and therefore doesn’t meet the U.S. requirement for visiting foreigners. So while many Europeans may now be able to come in, people from poorer countries where vaccines are scarce remain cut off, with limited exceptions.

For some public health experts, that raises ethical questions about the policy.

“The concern is not limiting access based on vaccination status,” said Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. “It is that it’s systemically making it impossible for people, generally from poor countries, whose governments have been unable to secure anything near the supply they need, to be able to come and see their loved ones.”

Even if you’ve gotten the jab, that might not be good enough. Non-immigrant adults need to have received vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration or which received an emergency use listing from the World Health Organization, otherwise they, too, are prohibited from entering the U.S. That sidelines anyone who’s received Russia’s Sputnik V or the China-produced CanSino jab.

Then there are the months-long delays in some places to get a visa. The U.S. Travel Association says that, on average, there’s a six-month visitor visa appointment backlog as many U.S. consulates and embassies have yet to resume normal operations. Meanwhile, other countries have their own strict rules, which complicates foreign travel.

Experts do expect a wave of travelers at U.S. airports, which will go a long way to boost the overall industry. The 28 European countries that up until Monday were barred under the U.S. policy made up 37% of overseas visitors in 2019, the U.S. Travel Association says.

Travelport, which analyzes airline bookings data, says that by region, the greatest number of international travelers to the U.S. since mid-2020 has come from Latin America, but new travelers booking flights since late September, when the Biden administration said it would end the travel bans, are mainly European. The reopening of the land borders with Canada and Mexico should also help restore travel, since they are typically the top two sources of international visitors to the U.S.

But the U.S. Travel Association predicted in June that international travel would not return to 2019 levels of nearly 80 million visitors until 2024. Foreign travelers dropped to 19 million in 2020 and is expected to rise a bit this year, to more than 26 million; it will more than double, to about 57 million, in 2022 but still fall far short of its pre-pandemic heights.

The U.S. isn’t alone in trying to jumpstart travel as more people get vaccinated. Some countries that closed their borders have begun easing back, like Australia, India and Thailand; Europe opened its doors to Americans months ago.

Others, like China and Japan, remain essentially closed, which makes it difficult for their own citizens to leave and come back because of mandatory quarantines. In 2019, the two countries were among the top five biggest sources of overseas visitors to the U.S., along with the U.K., South Korea and Brazil, according to U.S. government data.

Sylvia Li, who is from China and lives in the U.S., just married her partner in a small ceremony in New York a few weeks ago without her family there because she had no idea when they’d be able to come or when she’d be able to go to China.

“I was able to convince them, it’s really nothing, it’s just a party,” Li said. But her mom didn’t fall for it. “I think my mom felt she was missing out. She felt like she was actually missing something big.”

“it’s systemically making it impossible for people ... whose governments have been unable to secure anything near the supply [of vaccine] they need, to be able to come and see their loved ones.” – NANCY KASS, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE BERMAN INSTITUTE OF BIOETHICS AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY