Budget Cuts: A Probable Threat to U.S. Visas

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 01 March 2013, 23:20 IST
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Bangalore: Business people and tourists wanting to pay a visit to the U.S. now have a good enough reason to worry, that is, if the U.S. state department gets kicked by severe budget cuts. The hopes of a legislative solution before such a situation occurs is also pointless since it has been made apparent that no such solution is likely to occur before these budget cuts.

Government agencies will thus be forced to get their services trimmed. In order to get the volume of traffic that has been rapidly increasing dealt with, efforts have been made by the State Department in getting a number of consular officers dealt with, as has been shared by Patrick Ventrell, the deputy acting spokesman on the Indiatimes this Thursday.

However, these programs, including those arranged for the consular officers can be made to back out in case these automatic budget cuts begin to take effect. "We've had a huge influx of hiring of new consulate officers we sent out to hotspots like India, China, Brazil, where you have lots of middle class folks who are trying to come to the US for the first time and visit and spend their money," Ventrell said earlier this week, as reported by Indiatimes.com.

After having sixty six million tourists in the U.S. last year, the nation has generated revenue of $168 billion. Today ninety percent of those from different parts of the world seeking visas in the United States are being interviewed as late as within three weeks of application, while in China it takes just five days and in Brazil, just two.

"Sequestration threatens all of our operations because it cuts across the board," Ventrell said Thursday. "We estimate that for every 65 visitors to the US, that creates one American job."

Republican rivals have in fact been accused by the President of getting the state of economic recovery in the U.S. threatened. He says that the Republicans have failed to work well with his plan of deficit reduction.

In fact, both the Democrats and Republicans have failed in their attempts to get the two bills in the senate advanced which could have helped in getting these recent cuts averted.