America's Missing Tourists: COVID-19, Crime, and Long Waits Abroad
Forty mayors from 18 states have signed a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which they beg the State Department to speed up issuing visas to tourists, whom they want to see back and spending in their towns from Austin, Texas, to Urbana, Illinois. All those missing visas cost the U.S. economy around $5 billion in 2022 and will reduce tourist arrivals by 2.5 million in 2023 at a cost of another $7 billion, the mayors claim in their Feb. 13 letter to Blinken.