Photograph by LazyLlama for Adobe Stock
More than 130 leaders and advocates of the business-events industry descended on Capitol Hill yesterday for the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance’s annual Legislative Action Day. With Congress in recess, participants held the attention of legislators and their representatives during an unusually quiet day in the halls of Congress.
This year’s mission was to build more support for two of ECA’s top legislative priorities: reducing the wait time for international inbound travelers to obtain visas; and helping the industry attract, train and grow its workforce. Participants were well-prepared by ECA to demonstrate the importance of these measures, armed with statistics and talking points about the critical role of business events in driving economic growth and job creation.
Improving visa-processing wait times
Three bills currently under consideration are designed to give U.S. consular offices more flexibility and capacity in processing visa applications, improve transparency and accountability, and help prevent such delays from ever happening again: S.2632: Visa Processing Improvement Act, H.R.5127: Visitor Visa Wait Time Reduction Act, and H.R.7263: VISITOR Act.
Progress on this issue has been spotty, according to Tommy Goodwin, ECA’s vice president, who spearheaded Legislative Action Day. Wait times for visas from China and Brazil have been reduced significantly over the past year, but they’ve almost doubled for Mexico City, now averaging 849 days (2.3 years). In the three years since international travel resumed following the pandemic shutdown, trade shows have been unable to bring back constituents from parts of the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America, Goodwin added.
Building the future workforce
In 2020, 2.8 million workers in the business-events industry were furloughed or laid off. Just 2.5 million have come back, according to ECA. The industry needs help from Congress to expand the pool of Americans with the skills and training necessary to pursue careers and grow the economy.
Two measures would allow federal Pell Grants, currently earmarked for college education, to be used for shorter-term job-training programs in critical trades such as carpentry, electrical work and forklift operations, all of which are critical to the events industry. Those bills are S.161: JOBS Act of 2023 and H.R.6585: Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act.
Another bill, S.722/H.R.1477: Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act, would allow Americans to use their 529 savings plans to cover the costs of workforce training and credentialing programs, essentially broadening the definition of college savings plans to career savings plans.
“It is highly doubtful that any of these bills are going to become law this year,” said Goodwin. However, he added, key components might be incorporated into other legislation by the end of the year, and the day’s efforts to garner more support “could help push them over the finish line.”
How to get involved
Advocacy efforts are not limited to one day per year, Goodwin emphasized. The ECA is a coalition of leading professional, industry, and labor associations that comprise the unified advocacy voice of the business-events industry. “Whether you are on Capitol Hill, on the show floor or even on your phone, ECA invites you to be an advocate for the business events industry,” he said. “Together, we can be the strong, unified advocacy voice of the industry and shape our future with policymakers nationwide.”