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The U.S. Is Lifting Travel Restrictions for Visitors. What Do the New Rules Mean?

The Biden administration will allow vaccinated international travelers to enter the United States, including at land borders with Canada and Mexico. Details remain to be worked out, but here is what we know now.

Over the past year, many European visitors have spent two weeks in Mexico in order to get into the United States. Above, a scene at the Cancún International Airport.Credit...Reuters

The White House has announced that it will open its land borders with Canada and Mexico to fully vaccinated travelers starting on Nov. 8, simultaneously lifting one of the United States’ most far-reaching, pandemic-era travel restrictions and creating a new vetting process for entry.

The development follows a September announcement in which the White House said that, come November, it will lift the 18-month ban on visitors from the European Union, China, Iran, South Africa, Brazil and India, as long as they can show proof of vaccination and a negative coronavirus test.

Together these two policies fundamentally reshuffle rules about entry into the United States. For more than a year and a half, the United States based decisions on which country a traveler was coming from. The new rules reorient groupings of who can and who cannot enter based on vaccination status.

Along with spurring many people from restricted countries to immediately plan trips to the United States, the new policies also eliminated the need for one of the odder workarounds that sprung up during the pandemic: Travelers from the prohibited countries spending two weeks in an intermediate country — often, Mexico or the Dominican Republic — and then obtaining a negative coronavirus test there before flying to the United States.

Over the past six months, Fabienne Walther, 28, from Switzerland, has helped about 20 Europeans enter the United States via Mexico. Some have rented a room in her temporary home in Playa del Carmen. In other cases, she simply offered moral support and tips about where to eat.

“The whole travel through Mexico thing is a joke,” she said, given that contracting the coronavirus is actually more of a risk in the Cancún area than in the hometowns of many of the travelers she has helped.

The new policies have raised plenty of questions. Many details are yet to be announced, but here is a look at what is currently known about how entry into the United States will change.

For the past 18 months, virtually all visitors from the banned countries, including those who are members of the European Union and a handful of others, have been prohibited from traveling directly to the United States. Come Nov. 8, this policy will no longer apply, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House pandemic coordinator, announced. Individuals from these countries can fly to the United States — or drive, if coming from Mexico or Canada — as they did before the pandemic, provided they can show proof of vaccination. A negative coronavirus test is also required for those traveling by air — but not for those crossing the land border. No quarantine will be required, regardless of how visitors enter.

The C.D.C. will also issue an order directing airlines to collect phone numbers and email addresses of travelers for a new contact-tracing system. Additional details of the contact-tracing system have not yet been outlined.

Unvaccinated people who are not American citizens will not be permitted to enter the United States.

Regardless of whether people fly or drive in from Canada or Mexico they must be vaccinated. Initially, the new policy for international visitors only applied to people boarding an airplane. And vaccination status aside, land borders with Canada and Mexico are currently closed for all but essential travel. But in November, when the United States reopens the land borders, similar restrictions regarding vaccination status will apply, the White House said on Tuesday.

The shift in policy will also eventually affect people who were never banned from traveling across the land border. Commercial drivers and students, for example, will need to show proof of vaccination, starting in January, giving them some time to adjust to the new rules, officials said.

Until November, only essential visitors can drive in. The definition of “essential” offered by the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Canada includes “work and study, critical infrastructure support, economic services and supply chains, health, immediate medical care, and safety and security.”

The United States will accept vaccines authorized by U.S. regulators or listed for emergency use by the World Health Organization, according to the C.D.C. This includes Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech, two versions of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, Sinopharm and Sinovac. Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is not currently on the accepted list, meaning that most Russians and others inoculated with Sputnik V may be prohibited from entering the United States.

People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or two weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C. said. “Mix and match” vaccines, an inoculation strategy involving a first dose of one vaccine and a second dose of a different vaccine, will be accepted as long as each dose involved is an accepted vaccine, the C.D.C. said.

The new policy applies to everyone who is not a U.S. citizen, including individuals from Japan, Singapore, Mexico and many other countries whose citizens have been able to fly to the United States throughout the pandemic. Though vaccination status does not currently affect whether or not these individuals can enter the United States, in November only fully vaccinated travelers will be permitted.

Already these individuals have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test taken within three days of boarding a flight. This requirement will remain.

The policy applies to all “foreign nationals,” meaning that long-term residents of the United States who are not American citizens would not be able to leave the country and then re-enter unless they are fully vaccinated.

The vaccination stipulation does not apply to U.S. citizens. But the new policy does require unvaccinated Americans to provide proof of a negative result from a test taken within one day of their return flight to the United States, and to test again after they land.

Children under the age of 18 who are unvaccinated, and a limited category of foreigners arriving from countries with low vaccination rates, are among the travelers exempted from the requirements, Biden administration officials said on Oct. 25.

For people from many parts of the world — even before the pandemic — access into the United States was not easy. One of the reasons that the travel ban had such a profound impact is that it applied to many of the countries whose citizens traditionally had the easiest time gaining entry to the United States.

The new policy does not rewrite who can enter the United States without a visa, but it does severely limit who can enter the United States. Only four percent of the population in Africa is fully vaccinated; less than a third of residents are fully vaccinated in many parts of Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. In some cases, not getting vaccinated is a choice; in others, people simply do not have access to vaccines. Regardless of their reasons, these individuals will no longer be able to travel to the United States.

Ceylan Yeginsu contributed reporting from Turkey and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed from Washington.


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Heather Murphy is a reporter on the Travel desk. She welcomes tips, questions and complaints about traveling during the pandemic. More about Heather Murphy

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