"Policies keep changing, and enforcement keeps changing. It's becoming increasingly political, and travellers are being denied boarding—or [getting] detained."
That’s the word from veteran travel manager Steve Sitto, who today works for a global pharmaceutical firm that supports hundreds of employees travelling daily for their work. It’s getting much more complicated, he said, and much more expensive.
Take the recent addition of the "visa bond" requirement, which requires visitors from certain countries, including those applying for B-1 business visas, to post up to $15,000, refundable once they demonstrate they comply with the terms of the visa. Not only were seven countries – Bhutan, Botswana, Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia and Turkmenistan – unceremoniously added to the list at the beginning of the year, but the US State Department also only allows visa holders who posted a bond to enter through a limited list of nine airports. Some major international airports, including San Francisco, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, are not on that list, some companies headquartered near those airports must take extra care to make sure inbound travellers are starting at the right airport.
The need for consolidated help
Those sorts of nuances are among the reasons buyers managing global programmes said it is more important than ever to look to providers who can both help employees manage the immigration process and provide support when they encounter problems during travel.
Global risk providers similarly have reported increased demand for immigration-related services. While the US is in a particular state of flux, immigration policies have been changing around the world. In the meantime, the need to move people across borders for work is growing as well.
Earlier this year, global mobility specialist Vialto Partners reported it had enhanced its Law division with a team of nine professionals specialising in US immigration.
"The pandemic has resulted in a lot of governments looking at immigration policies," said Sharan Kundi, immigration services leader for Vialto Partners. "There's also a skill shortage, so while immigration laws are becoming tighter, the need for global talent is increasing."
Travel buyer Rafael Rosario said, in talking with buyer colleagues, he is surprised by how many companies still leave it to the employee to navigate visa requirements, consulates and paperwork on their own. "It's financial, it's reputational – especially in this environment, we have to cover all of that," he said.
A global provider not only can make sure employees follow and complete the processes correctly but also can help cut through some of the red tape as governments face backlogs of visa requests, Rosario said. "We've been able to expedite appointments, because it's a business need," he said.
Even when travellers have no problems managing the process on their own, they might not understand every requirement. A traveler visiting a country on a business visa, for example, might not realise that if they even briefly work with a piece of manufacturing equipment, it could be a violation, as the work would require a work visa.
Sitto said he has used his global provider to set up an immigration hotline for employees.
"Creating the emergency immigration tier was a necessity, because we were experiencing difficulties at some borders, including re-entry into the United States," he said. "Having an expert back you up and be available 24/7 for your employees was the only way we could reduce risk."
Rosario said, working with his risk provider, his company has a process that immediately verifies a traveller's nationality and passport validity when a traveller makes a booking so that they can be advised what preparations they need to make.
Aside from managing problems and processes for the travellers, part of it is simply providing peace of mind for travellers who are anxious about the immigration process. Bruce McIndoe, president of McIndoe Risk Advisory, said he's seeing more companies putting together fact sheets for employees specifically about inbound international travel into the United States.
"There are employees who are concerned about coming into the US," he said. "The companies have to calm them down and give specific guidance and encourage them to make the trip."
Jack Brown, senior security coordinator with global risk management provider Healix International, also said he's seeing increased demand from travellers for one-pagers or flyers prior to international travel. He said that, along with having a hotline to call, can help reduce anxiety for travellers worried about enhanced scrutiny at the border.
That includes alleviating some of the "overblown" anxiety travellers might be facing, Brown said. In particular, even though travellers are showing more concern about facing electronic device seizures upon entering the US, data shows that it remains only a small fraction of a percentage of travellers who have their devices searched by US customs officials.
"The practice is still incredibly rare," he said. "Misinformation, fears and anxiety can lead to bad ideas and advice for travellers."
For example, if travellers opt to use a burner device rather than their own personal device and happen to face enhanced screening, the use of a burner device could raise more red flags with security officials than if they had been carrying their own, Brown said.
A breaking point?
Concerns and challenge with US immigration policies and enforcement ultimately will have an impact on companies' business travel patterns and broader strategy. A Global Business Travel Association poll of 571 buyers, suppliers and travel management companies, conducted in January, showed that entry/exit permissions and visas ranked behind only affordability as a top concern for buyers, cited by nearly two-thirds of buyer respondents. Among buyers whose employees take more than 10,000 trips per year, 79 per cent listed it as a major concern.
Proposed enhanced restrictions to the US Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which would require travellers to submit such information as extensive social media history and family information, would magnify those concerns. In the same GBTA survey, 63 per cent said the proposal would impact employee willingness to travel to the US, and 67 per cent of European travel professionals in the survey said their employees would opt not to travel to the US rather than provide that information.
In addition, 43 per cent of respondents said the rules would make their companies more likely to hold meetings outside of the US, and 19 per cent said it might cause them to change policies to limit travel to the US.
Vialto's Kundi said while the company's immigration team helps clients' employees navigate the immigration process, part of their service is also helping companies map out their strategies in making sure when they bring in talent, they can navigate the immigration routes as an employer. That might require looking at alternate strategies, she said.
"You may want to employ someone in the US, but it will take too long, be too complex or not be possible," Kundi said. "So, what are the alternatives available to you? What markets might you want to explore? It's that level of advice we often give."
Along those lines, Rosario said he has started working closely with HR and recruiting to understand the international travel requirements for new-hire positions. HR can provide the nationality of the person, and the travel team can work with the company's law firm to do a pre-assessment to determine whether the person would be able to feasibly handle the travel – with an understanding that the company will not discriminate against the person because of that, he said.
AI as friend and foe
Advancements in AI technology will shift immigration challenges in corporate travel on several fronts.
In terms of process, AI will be able to help companies and their employees make sure they are filling out the correct paperwork and filling it out properly, reducing the chances of application errors that delay the process or cause rejections. For example, Toronto-based Intellivisa – which recently announced a partnership with Sabre – has automated the visa process, and co-founder Srijan Magon said the company has achieved a 99 per cent accuracy rate.
That will help companies be more agile even when facing fast-changing regulations and enforcement, as with the US right now.
"If there's a rule change on the government end, it can be updated on our end in real time," Magon said. "We bring everything together and consolidate it to the most structured format, so you get what you need to go from Point A to Point B."
Kundi said Vialto is looking to AI to automate some of its administrative processes, which she said will free up the immigration team to be better able to "hand-hold" employees going through the immigration process.
It stands to reason that the governments themselves increasingly will be able to tap AI to speed up visa processing as well. At the same time, AI also will expand how deeply governments are able to vet travellers who are entering a country, McIndoe said. Forget submitting five years of online history. As AI advances, "your online persona is going to become more and more accessible and critical," he said.
"The government will have a greater understanding of, 'Who is this person, and what are his values?' " McIndoe said. "I do feel as we move year over year, we'll see more and more self-censorship, and more and more scrutiny and denials of visas than most people figure."
AI also adds an additional layer of challenge to risk management with the technology capable of creating fake content, which creates more confusion around immigration, Brown said. There already has been manufactured content around US Immigrations and Custom Enforcement activity that has gone viral, which could cause companies and their risk management providers to offer advice around bad information.
"My concern is that it makes it more troubling for a company to separate noise from reality," Brown said. "There's already so much noise and partisanship, and you add in some fake content, it has the potential to turn up the heat and make things even more unpredictable."