The U.S. Travel Association’s Tori Emerson Barnes released a statement August 5 in response to reports that the Biden administration will first reopen its borders to vaccinated travelers:

“The U.S. travel industry welcomes reports that the Biden administration is building a plan to reopen our borders to fully vaccinated international travelers from countries long impacted by the 212(f) travel restrictions—an important first step to welcoming back millions of visitors from some of our top inbound markets,” said Barnes, executive vice president of public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association. “While vaccinations are a crucial tool to allow us to reopen to 212(f) countries, it would be a step back to replace the current testing requirement with a vaccine requirement for all other countries.

Barnes went on to say that every week travel bans on the UK, EU, and Canada remain in place, our economy loses $1.5 billion in spending, which would support 10,000 American jobs.