Brazil reintroduces visa requirements for American tourists 

Starting on Oct. 1, tourists from the United States, Australia, Canada, and Japan will need to obtain a visa to visit Brazil, the South American country’s foreign ministry said. 

Visa requirements for the four countries had been scrapped by a unilateral decision made by former president Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 in an effort to boost tourism in the country. 

The move represented “a break with the pattern of Brazilian migration policy, historically based on the principles of reciprocity and equal treatment,” Brazil’s foreign ministry said in a statement released on Monday. Traditionally, Brazil has required visas for tourists from countries that require visas from Brazilian visitors. 

“Brazil does not grant unilateral exemption from visiting visas, without reciprocity, to other countries,” the ministry said, adding that it is willing to negotiate a visa waiver agreement with the four countries. 

Bolsonaro criticized the decision to impose the visa requirements, calling it “another revocation by Lula.” 

Before the pandemic, Brazil received 6.4 million tourists, according to data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization—a low number compared to other Latin American countries such as Mexico, which received 45 million, and Argentina, which received 7.4 million tourists. 

According to data from Brazil’s tourism ministry, the entries of Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Japanese plummeted and almost reached a standstill between 2019 and 2021. The ministry attributes the decline in tourism from these countries to the pandemic. 

In 2022, the number of U.S. tourists was still below 2018 figures. Meanwhile, Japanese tourists fell by 4.5% in 2019 and only 17,000 visited the South American country in 2022, according to Reuters.