IAEE president addresses potential consequences of U.S. visa policies

While addressing members of the National Press Club, International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) president Steven Hacker, CAE, reinforced the shared values and opinions of the positive, global impact of face-to-face events. He also expressed concerns about the barriers that buyers and sellers around the world encounter due to federal visa issuance policies that negate progress in achieving President Obama’s National Export Initiative goal of doubling the value of U.S. exports by 2015.

“Current U.S. visa policies impede participation in tradeshows and act as a barrier to foreign trade as U.S. companies fail to meet with current or potential prospects,” said Hacker. “We are seeing evidence that buyers from important emerging markets like China, India and Vietnam are the likeliest visitors to be denied entry, and additional export losses are experienced in the form of lost international visitor spending in the hospitality and meetings industries.”

The value of exhibitions and events is the indispensable global platform of connecting buyers and sellers to drive international trade. Annually, there are more than 10,000 business-to-business events and almost one-third of the world’s exhibitions occur in the United States, yet many exhibiting companies are stymied from competing effectively due to archaic and ill-advised federal visa issuance policies.

“Unless these policies change, we will be unable to reach that goal, and we will continue to forfeit the chance to compete effectively and we will fail to recapture jobs lost to international competitors,” said Hacker.

Late last year, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) commissioned Oxford Economics to conduct The Economic Impact of International Non-Participation in the Exhibition Industry Due to U.S. Visa Issues1. The study measured visitor visa issues that impede participation in tradeshows, acting as a barrier to foreign trade as U.S. companies fail to meet with current or potential prospects and secondly, the result of additional export losses experienced in the form of lost international visitor spending in the hospitality and meetings industries.

Findings of the study include:

• Visa issues precluded 116,000 international participants from attending U.S. exhibitions.
• This includes 78,400 international attendees and 37,900 international exhibitors who were hindered from participating.
• Average spending of foreign buyers while in the U.S. exceeds $13,600.
• The U.S. economy would increase in business sales tallying $2.6 billion. This includes $1.5 billion in business-to-business trade, $540 million in registration fees and exhibition space spending, and a $295 million boost to visitor spending.
• The increase in sales to businesses in the U.S. that cater to international visitors would increase $2.4 billion. This increase sustains 17,500 jobs directly; 43,000 jobs overall, and would generate three-quarters of a billion dollars in state and federal taxes
• Removing the barriers to international attendance at U.S. trade events would boost foreign trade associated with exhibitions by 14 percent.

“The case for visa reform could not be clearer. Unless and until we adopt measures such as those being proposed today by the U.S. Travel Association, we have no reason to expect that U.S. goods and services will be able to meet the challenge of powerful global competition, and we will continue to fall behind,” said Hacker. “We must reform visa policies if we hope to get back into the game of international trade.”