OPINION: 8 reasons for ending Joe Biden’s travel bans

The following op-ed was originally published by the Cato Institute:

Back in July, I outlined why Joe Biden’s crude COVID-19 travel bans on non-Americans coming from Europe, India, and a few other countries no longer made any sense from a public health perspective.

Talk in Washington at the time was of lifting these restrictions by September. Well, here we are, mid-way through that month and the restrictions are going strong. Officials and diplomats now seem to think October or even Thanksgiving are the earliest potential dates for their removal. Some ponder whether the political incentives might point towards inaction until the mid-terms...which would mean bans had been in place for 32 MONTHS.

For background again: since last spring, the U.S. international border has prohibited entry for travelers from the Schengen EU travel zone (the EU’s passport free countries), the U.K., Ireland, Iran and China within the previous 14 days. India, South Africa and Brazil were added to the restricted list during their respective outbreaks. Americans, permanent U.S. residents, their dependents, spouses, children and certain student visa holders or permanent visa applicants are exempt from these rules, just requiring a negative test before entering the US. But nonimmigrant U.S. work visa holders and non-American visitors to the U.S. are not; a lot of the former already here are therefore scared of leaving, in case they cannot get back into the country.

As a great op-ed by Josh Glancy in the UK’s Times newspaper concluded, that inertia means that entry to the U.S., particularly for those traveling from Europe, is currently governed by “a set of rules instituted over 500 days ago that bear absolutely no resemblance to the reality we now inhabit.” Oliver Wiseman and I wrote for the Dispatch this week that these rules are even less coherent given President Biden’s attempts to cajole everyone into being vaccinated through a workplace mandate. Removing them isn’t just in the self-interest of whiny Europeans or H-1B visa holders, either. These bans are harming American families and businesses too.

So here’s a quick rundown of eight reasons the bans should be scrapped as soon as possible.

1. The bans have no link to the prevalence of COVID-19.

When the China and Europe bans were first introduced, COVID-19 appeared highly concentrated in those places, so there was at least some defensible rationale to restricting travel from those parts of the world (studies later implied the public health benefit of banning entry even at that stage was negligible, perhaps because the bans didn’t cover Americans or because the existing spread of the disease in the U.S. was large anyway). In any case, COVID-19 has now spread pretty much everywhere. And yet no blacklisted countries have been removed from the restrictions after joining the list.

As our Dispatch piece highlighted, “Poland, for example, today has just 10.2 new daily cases per million people. In Costa Rica, the equivalent figure is 484. In Israel, it is 797- a level almost seven times higher than for the EU as a whole.” But non-American travelers from Costa Rica and Israel can come and go from the United States as they please, while those traveling from Poland and other EU countries continue to be barred from entering. In fact, late in August, research suggested COVID-19 prevalence was higher in non-banned countries overall than banned countries, and far lower in both groups than in the U.S. itself. New daily COVID-19 case rates per million, for example, are currently almost four times higher in the U.S. than in the EU.

There is no COVID-19 prevalence justification, then, for travel from this specific set of countries to be generally banned.

2. The bans ignore vaccination status.

President Joe Biden regularly talks about how we are now in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Yet, outside of the exemptions for Americans, permanent citizens, and the rest, his travel bans offer no ability for the unexempted to enter based on vaccination status or a negative test result - even for people who live and pay taxes in the United States on nonimmigrant visas returning from their European or Indian homelands.

As a result of his heavy-handed and potentially illegal “kind of, sort of” workplace vaccine mandate, the President therefore now demands more public health screening for Americans going into their office than for travelers coming into the country from Malaysia or Colombia, all the while vaccinated, uninfected visitors or work visa holders can’t get into the U.S. because they’ve visited Europe. Whatever you think about the workplace vaccine mandate, it makes the travel ban even more bizarre and indefensible.

3. The bans have no link to COVID-19 vaccination rates by country either.

If Biden really believed in the power of vaccinations but wanted to avoid imposing a vaccine mandate for air travel that required general vaccine passport infrastructure, he might instead base his restrictions on vaccination levels in the country from which people are traveling from. And yet, while talking a big game on the power of vaccines, the President’s travel policy is completely unmoored from this consideration.

Portugal, Spain and Denmark have fully vaccinated 81 percent, 76 percent and 74 percent of their overall populations, respectively, trouncing the United States (53 percent). But all three of those EU countries still find themselves ensnared in the EU ban. Jamaica, though, a popular destination for American tourists and from which people can freely flow, has fully vaccinated a meager 5 percent of its people. Mexico too, the most highly-traveled destination to and from the United States, has fully vaccinated only 28 percent of its population. To add to the absurdity: European travelers with the means have been circumventing the travel ban by staying in Mexico or other less vaccinated, non-banned countries for two weeks, so that they can then enter the U.S. indirectly.

4. The bans have a huge toll on families.

On Sunday, Brit Emma Raducanu won the U.S. Open Women’s tennis, but her parents were unable to enter the U.S. to watch the final, due to the travel ban from the UK. Earlier last week, actress Megan Prescott heard that her twin sister had been hit by a cement truck in New York, but Megan was initially denied entry into the U.S. to care for her twin (until the authorities finally relented).

These stories highlight the human cost of Biden’s travel bans. While the specifics of these examples are highly unusual, millions of Americans, Europeans, and Indians have now faced the consequences of being unable to spend time with or share moments with loved ones for over a year and a half, with vaccinated grandparents unable to come to the U.S. to meet or see their grandchildren, long-distance partners separated, U.S. taxpayers on nonimmigrant work visas being refused re-entry or having to scramble for exemptions after traveling to be with sick family members, and families continuously plagued with uncertainty or forced into indirect travel to attend weddings or other family events. The unseen costs of the travel bans include deterred family formation, the killing of long-distance relationships, and the deterring of Europeans from pursuing or maintaining a life here.

5. The bans deter investment into the United States.

When the bans were first introduced by President Trump, U.S. authorities were willing to grant exemptions for visits deemed to be in the U.S. national interest, which included trips for economic reasons. In reality, that meant carve-outs could often be found for things such as “executive-level business meetings, manufacturing site visits, and visits to US cities to open US offices and create jobs,” albeit judged fairly subjectively.

Since March 2021, though, Biden’s administration has tightened the rules, and travelers now have to show they would be providing “vital support to the critical infrastructure” to gain an exemption on economic grounds. As a result, meaningful foreign direct investment is being discouraged. One lawyer documented how he had a “request for a business traveler driving $450m into the US denied along with an acting CEO for a drug development company denied for a meeting with the Food and Drug Administration.”

European officials said in July that it was getting increasingly difficult for European companies to maintain and build on their investments in the U.S. economy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has shown that European FDI into the U.S. already plunged by $39 billion between 2019 and 2020. Continuation of the travel ban therefore brings significant costs in terms of lost business opportunities.

6. The bans hit the American tourism industry hard.

COVID-19 meant a big hit to travel into the U.S. was inevitable, irrespective of government policies. But the United States saw a huge 81 percent decline in overseas travel visitations in 2020, with banned Schengen countries such as Italy seeing the largest declines. True, domestic tourism within the United States took up some of the slack, particularly during the summer of 2021. But tourism has still been hit very hard by the travel ban, not least because international visitors, who only make up 3 percent of trips within the United States, usually make up 15 percent of total spending.

Deep-pocketed international travelers have been hard to replace in states heavily reliant on international tourism, such as Hawaii, Nevada, and Florida, shrinking their tax bases too. In everything from hotels to airlines, restaurants to entertainment industries, the existing travel restrictions prevent mutually beneficial trades from being realized: trades which could take place at relatively low risk given the existence of vaccines, rapid tests, and more.

7. The bans can prevent non-immigrant visa holders from doing their jobs.

A lot of nonimmigrant visa holders have found themselves stranded abroad as a result of the travel bans, making it more difficult for them to undertake their work. Though businesses have naturally been accommodating, workers being stuck in, say, Europe or India, means operating across different time zones, the possibility of tax liabilities for companies in different countries, and concerns about data access and privacy. This matters because, by affecting visa categories such as the H-1B visa, the travel bans are keeping nonimmigrant workers from performing skilled jobs at wages in the 90th percentile. And, of course, the existence of the ban itself deters people who foresee the need or desire to travel to blacklisted countries from coming to the U.S. on nonimmigrant work visas in the first place.

8. The bans lead to retaliation from other countries.

Recently, the EU recommended that its member states ban “nonessential travel” from the U.S. This was ostensibly about the rise of the Delta variant here, but “reciprocity” was also cited as a key factor in the EU Council’s advisory ruling. Travel controls beget travel controls.

Bulgaria, Norway and Sweden have followed through on the EU’s recommendations. Greece has intimated that new restrictions might be coming soon. France has generally banned unvaccinated American tourists, who must now provide a “compelling reason” for their travel, a negative test result, and quarantine for a week if allowed into the country. In Italy, unvaccinated U.S. arrivals have to self-isolate for 5 days, only exiting quarantine with a negative test result at that stage. In the Netherlands, restrictions are tighter still, with even vaccinated Americans having to quarantine for 10 days.

While it’s likely some of these restrictions would exist given COVID-19 and European governments’ reaction to it, the U.S. travel ban on the EU undoubtedly makes it easier for European governments to justify their own restrictions. Indeed, many of those affected by the U.S. travel bans urge European governments to respond in kind to pressure the Biden administration to relent. This creates mutually assured human and economic suffering, far beyond what might be described as proportionate public health policies.