Please come, shop. US woos Indians with easy-to-get visas

New York: Desperate times call for drastic measures. Washington has come up with an ingenious way to help keep the US out of recession: import consumers from India, China and Brazil with money to burn by making it “easy as pie” for them to get tourist visas to travel to the US.

To boost the sagging economy, lawmakers and White House officials are courting newly-moneyed shoppers from the emerging countries to fill up luxurious US shopping malls as American consumers tighten their hold on purses. Among the incentives to foreign shoppers would be coupons, beauty contests - and lax visa rules.

[caption id=“attachment_99581” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“Uncle Sam wants your shopping dollars, and he’s willing to ease your visa process. Reuters”]  [/caption]

An official from the bureau of consular affairs told Firstpost that travel to the US on a B1/B2 visitor visa would soon become “easy as pie” as steps were being taken to tackle long visa wait times in Brazil, India, and China, in particular, by increasing staff at US consular offices.

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A bill has also been introduced in the US Congress, which would require visas to be processed in 12 days and authorise the use of videoconferencing to conduct visa interviews.

“By making it easier to travel to the United States without compromising important national security safeguards, we can stimulate local economies and help our businesses grow and thrive,” said Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Senator Klobuchar, along with Republican Senator Roy Blunt, introduced a measure on Tuesday that would cut short the wait for visas for foreign travellers to enter the US. Both senators head up the Senate tourism caucus.

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US policymakers estimate that if the red carpet were rolled out, shoppers from overseas could spend $859 billion over the next decade, creating 1.3 million new jobs. President Obama’s jobs council has deemed international travel to be the “low-hanging fruit” for stimulating the economy.

“The appeal of this idea is that it is a potentially politically palatable way to deal with a fundamental economic problem that is keeping companies from hiring - excess capacity,” Peter Cohan, author of the new book Export Now, wrote in Forbes.

“The beauty of importing these consumers is that it’s so easy - all we have to do is let them know where they can buy their bargains and make it quicker for them to get visas to enter the US.”

Cohan said a brief review of the performance of leading upscale US retail brands revealed “eye-popping growth thanks to demand from the globe’s nouveau riche.” He said that Tiffany, Coach and Ralph Lauren all expected to grow on the strength of expansion in Asia.

David French, senior vice president for government relations at the National Retail Federation, described the US efforts as the retail industry’s own little “stimulus program.”

Although the bulk of American tourism dollars still come from Canadian, Japanese and British tourists, there was a 39 percent pop in 2010 Chinese tourism spending in the US to $5 billion; a 30 percent increase to $6 billion from Brazil, and a 12 percent increase to $4 billion from Indian tourists.

“The trend underscores the depth of the United States’ reliance on countries once considered to be at the bottom of the global totem pole,” observed the Washington Post wryly.

China’s consumers already exhibit world-beating tendencies. They spend almost 10 hours a week shopping compared with 3.6 hours for the typical American, a 2007 survey showed.

Spending by American shoppers, long considered the engine of the nation’s economy has slowed to a crawl. America is now waking up to the fact that it has been relatively stingy with tourist visas for free-spending Indian, Chinese and Brazilian tourists, while being overly generous to the Koreans and Europeans.