Canadian, Mexican businesses complain about costs of new visa requirement

From El Economista, The Canadian Press and CBC News

As the number of Mexicans seeking visas to travel to Canada swelled to 1,000 at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City Wednesday, business groups in the two countries complained about the costs of the new Canadian program to require visas of visitors from Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene to request that the program be postponed until the end of August, Mexico's Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) issued a statement saying the rule represents an obstacle to business relations between entrepreneurs of both countries and for trade relations.

The new requirement will especially hurt those in the airline and tourism industries as well as Mexicans who will need to travel to Mexico City to process the visa, it said.

In Toronto, some businesses said the visa requirement will have an immediate and detrimental effect. Andrew Weir of Tourism Toronto said the requirement will especially hurt tourism from Mexico.

Over the past five years visitors from Mexico to Toronto have surpassed Japanese and German tourists and now hold the No. 3 spot for visitors to the city. The Canadian tourism industry says Mexcians accounted for 266,000 visitors last year.