Isle restaurateurs support efforts to ease visa rules for foreign visitors

The restaurant industry in Hawaii is an important one, with 3,500 locations employing more than 82,000 workers.

The Hawaii Restaurant Association is dedicated to representing, educating and promoting this industry, which is a real cornerstone of Hawaii’s economy.

Hawaii’s restaurateurs understand that the health of our industry is closely tied to tourism. Travelers who come to Hawaii eat out, attend banquets and parties, and help make our industry a vibrant contributor to the state’s economy.

But tourists’ dollars don’t stop at the front door. That spending pays for the salaries of servers and cooks. It pays rent, buys food products and supplies, and fills gas tanks — all of which have an indirect multiplier effect that are critical to a healthy local economy.

Anything that helps bring more visitors to Hawaii is good for the food service industry and good for Hawaii. That’s why we are adding our voice to the many others who are calling for reform of America’s policy for granting visas to citizens of other countries who want to come visit the U.S.

The number of tourists coming to Hawaii has been increasing over the last couple of years, and we want that trend to continue.

But there are lucrative pockets of potential visitors — like the growing middle- and upper-class in China, which outspends visitors from other countries by as much as two to one — that are being held back by the difficulties involved in having to secure a visa to travel to the U.S.

Getting a U.S. travel visa in China can be a long and expensive process. Reports are that it can take as much as four months to get a visa interview, and many times it requires traveling great distances to a consular office in a far away city to get the interview. Chinese travelers cite the expense and difficulty of obtaining a visa as one of the key reasons for deciding to travel to countries other than the U.S.

Reforming this process can be done with simple steps: a commitment to putting more workers into the process to speed up processing, using technologies like teleconferencing to aid in handling the backlog of interviews, and expanding the use of the visa waiver program to help handle demand, among others.

The Hawaii Restaurant Association is committed to working with our elected representatives in Congress to encourage these reforms and help open the doors to welcome international visitors to come and enjoy the many treasures — and great meals — that Hawaii has to offer.

Victor Lim is past chairman of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and on the board of the National Restaurant Association.