Donna Christensen on Immigration Delegate to US House (VI-AL)

Improve visa process to get more travelers from China.

A BILL: To promote job creation in the US by addressing inefficiencies in the visa processing system that discourage overseas business and leisure travel to the US.

Congress finds the following:
1. International travel to the US generates more than $134 billion annually in exports and supports 1.8 million US jobs
2. Global travel spending is expected to double over the next decade, reaching $2.1 trillion
3. While world-wide long-haul international travel grew by 40% between 2000 and 2010, the US market share of long-haul travel dropped from 17% in 2000 to 12% during the same timeframe
4. Lagging overseas arrivals result in large part from a US visa application process that is perceived by potential business and leisure travelers as inefficient, time consuming, and inaccessible
5. Removing the self-imposed barriers in the visa application process that currently discourage inbound international travel to the US would yield significant economic and public diplomacy benefits for the US
6. Increased international travel to the US also achieves US foreign policy objectives by introducing foreign visitors to the US and to Americans, who are the US' best goodwill ambassadors.

• The Secretary of State shall set a visa processing standard of 12 or fewer calendar days at US diplomatic and consular missions in China, Brazil, and India.
• The Secretary of State shall conduct a two-year pilot program for the processing of nonimmigrant visas using secure remote video-conferencing technology as a method for conducting visa interviews of applicants.
• If the Secretary of State can demonstrate no adversarial effects to the United States, the Secretary may modify or enter into agreements with certain countries on a non-reciprocal basis to allow for longer visa validity periods than the periods with such countries that are in existence as of the date of the enactment of this Act.