Secretary Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on the Economic Benefits of U.S. Travel and Tourism

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the State Department. It's a particular pleasure for me to be here with my colleague and my friend, Secretary Raimondo, this morning.

The work that the State Department does issuing visas, issuing passports to Americans, does more than anything else to connect the world and connect the United States to the world. We want to make sure that people can travel for work, for education, for tourism, and do it legally, do it safely. One of the ways that this State Department serves the American people directly is through the issuance of passports and visas. And these ties of friendship, collaboration that we're building - they will last for years, for decades, for generations.

Just over the last few years, we've made significant investments in strengthening our ability to deliver - deliver for the American people, deliver for people who want to come to the United States. And as a result of these efforts on visas and on passports, more people are traveling to the United States than ever before; more Americans are traveling the world than ever before.

On the visa side, in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that's a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas. That's a 10 percent increase over the previous year. Wait times to get visas are down, down by nearly 60 percent since the acute phase of the pandemic, which made it so difficult for our embassies and consulates around the world to issue visas. Today, the median wait time is under 60 days for a first-time-visitor visa interview.

And we are going to continue all of this progress. We aim to add an additional 1 million visa appointments in Fiscal Year 2025. And that's on top of the record number of appointments that we had this past year.

All of that is supporting travel to the United States, including for major sporting events. We've got the FIFA World Cup coming up. We have the Olympics and Paralympics coming up. We have the rugby world championships. All of this at the start of a mega decade for sports here in the United States.

We're doing everything we can to ramp up our capacity to make sure that everyone who's coming to this country for these incredible events, as well as for so much else, get their visas in a timely way and a smooth way. And all of that I think you'll see play out over the next couple of years.

At the same time, I just want to note that on the passport side, giving the American people that little blue book that's their ticket to the world, there again record numbers of passports issued; 24.5 million passport books and cards in Fiscal Year 2024, an all-time high, half a million more than the previous year. And even with this record-breaking number of passports, wait times are also going down, now just four to six weeks.

In September, we rolled out for the first time our online passport renewal program. So now most Americans who need to renew their passports can do it right from their homes, online, just uploading a photograph, sending it in. The turnaround time has gone down from a month to a week for those passports. We're modernizing; we're making sure that we're delivering for the American people. Already more than a million Americans have taken advantage of online passport renewal.

All of this work is being done by an extraordinary team here at the department, our consular team. And as I said before, we had really challenging times during COVID. But the work that the consular team has done has been extraordinary in not only building back but getting us to the best place we've ever been in issuing visas, in issuing passports.

And what we know is this: This is a matter for real people, real lives, enabling families to get together, enabling businesses to work together, enabling investors to do the work that's helping to grow our economies around the world, and bringing people together for the most joyous things that unite us - sports, arts, culture, science and technology.

So for us, this is at the heart of what we do here at the State Department. And I'm so gratified that we do it in the closest collaboration with our friends and colleagues from the Commerce Department. The two of us are united in making sure that, again, more people can come to this country, more Americans can travel the world. That's good for the - that's good for America; it's good for the world.

And now, it's a pleasure to hand it over to my colleague, Gina Raimondo. Gina.

SECRETARY RAIMONDO: Thanks. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. It is a great pleasure for me to be here with Secretary Blinken, who is my colleague, my friend, and, I think, doing an extraordinary job serving this country all over the world. So thank you for hosting us this morning.

Of course, everything that the Secretary said is true, but it's also true that what we're announcing here today will create a lot of jobs in this country. Travel and tourism isn't just fun and isn't just meaningful, as you said; it's real business. It is real economic activity, sustaining millions of good paying jobs in this country. And as the Secretary said, COVID was a crushing time. It was a crushing time for our economy. It was an especially crushing time for the travel and tourism industry. And it was painful to see how many Americans were put out of work because of COVID.

And so what we are doing today is making it easier to travel to this country, which will be a real shot in the arm for the travel and tourism industry. The facts are today travel and tourism supports nearly 10 million American jobs - 10 million American jobs - and $2.3 trillion in economic activity. Last year, visitation was 66 million people - as the Secretary said, up from 50 million the year before. By next year, we're projecting that the industry will be fully recovered from COVID, and we're on track to see 90 million visitors by 2026. That, I want to point out, is a year earlier than our strategic goal. So that is a tremendous amount of progress, that's a tremendous amount of economic activity, and it's a tremendous amount of Americans whose jobs will be more secure because of the work that we're doing.

I'm very proud of my team. I want to thank the team at ITA for enabling this. I'd like to thank those who serve on Commerce's Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. We - some of the leaders in the travel and tourism industry, we heard from them that visa wait times were a pain point, were an obstacle to this commerce. And that's why we got together with the State Department to make sure that it will be easier, faster, more streamlined to get your visas and come to the United States.

Tony mentioned also this is going to be a blockbuster decade for sports and sporting events. That's a huge amount of economic activity. Think of all the economic activity around a World Cup or an Olympics, or a Super Bowl - we were just talking about. So we want to make it easier for fans to travel here, for sports teams themselves to travel here.

You might not believe this, but I was a rugby player back in the day - (laughter) - a few years ago. So as a former rugby player, I'm particularly excited that the men's and women's Rugby World Cups are going to be coming to the United States for the first time ever. So I hope a lot of people will come from around the world to see that. I know I'll be going. And I just can't wait.

Final thing I'll say is this is a moment of great collaboration, right. People are often saying: What is the government doing for me? This is an example of the State Department working with the Commerce Department hand in glove, fixing something, right. Maybe it isn't glamorous, but the work that our teams did is making a difference in the lives of Americans and improving our economy - by just making it easier, working through the plumbing and the red tape to get it out of the way, to streamline the visa and travel process.

So it's exciting. I'm grateful to Secretary Blinken, his leadership. He has a lot on his plate right now - (laughter) - a lot on his plate right now. And this shows you the kind of leader he is, paying attention to the details to make this operation work better for the American people. So thank you.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: No one to better be in the scrum with - (laughter) - than Gina. (Applause.)

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