In a reversal of a policy of allowing entry with no visa which was implemented on Monday, June 17, 2019, Brazil postponed visa requirement on Thursday, April 10, 2025 for citizens of the United States, Australia, and Canada “in compliance with the principle of reciprocity” — but the good news is that the cost of the visa for Brazil will be reduced once the visa requirement is back in effect.
Update: Cost of Visa For Brazil To Be Reduced
Citizens of the United States who visited Brazil in the past were required to pay $160.00 in fees to obtain a visa — plus they needed to visit an actual consulate or embassy of Brazil in order to apply for a visa…
…but effective as of Thursday, April 10, 2025, one can simply apply online for an electronic visa to visit Brazil — which is certainly significantly easier than traveling to a consulate or embassy — and the fee will only be a total of $80.90 instead of $160.00 for a validity period of ten years. Five working days is needed on average to process an electronic visa for Brazil for the applicant to download.
The application requirements are as follows:
- A signed valid passport with two of its visa pages free that is valid up to the end of the travel to Brazil
- Visa application form, which is to be completed online
- Passport-style photograph with white background that is 2 inches in height by 2 inches in width
- Electronic visa fee payment of $80.90 in United States dollars, with the 90 cents charged as a “platform fee”
In addition to the aforementioned visa application requirements, applicants who are younger than 18 years of age at the time of application must present additional materials.
Final Boarding Call
Although I can understand why a country would want to impose restrictive visas on visitors for various reasons — keeping track of them while they are in that country; as well as to have a revenue stream; and perhaps purposely seeking to reduce “overtourism” — they do stand the chance of losing out on the economic benefits of the dollars of tourists and business people when the process of securing that visa is unnecessarily complicated and prohibitively expensive. Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Russia are three countries which immediately come to my mind when it comes to the hassle of getting a visa — although Saudi Arabia has in recent years been working on becoming friendlier to foreign visitors — but Brazil has been known in the past to not exactly have had the easiest or least-expensive process either.
For me, countries which have such restrictive visa policies indicate to me that they are not friendly countries; or perhaps they just do not want for you or me to visit for whatever reasons — and yes, I do understand that there are people who view the United States in that manner as well. In today’s “shrinking” world primarily due to technology, that is a potentially costly mistake, in my opinion. Restrictive visa policies may scratch the “tip of the iceberg” pertaining to greater issues within certain countries; but they do not help in promoting being part of what should be a peaceful global community.
By reducing — or, better yet, eliminating — the fees to secure a visa for a visitor, I believe that the economic benefits would more than make up for it. Although the new fee is better than the initial $160.00, that $80.90 per person for a visa to visit Brazil could instead go towards patronizing businesses and other areas of the general economy, which in turn would increase tax revenues for the government as one of many benefits. I am by no means an expert on economic policies in global economies; but I believe that charging exorbitant visa fees actually does more harm to countries economically in the long term than helps them.
At the very least, countries should do whatever is possible to strike a realistic balance in ensuring their security and charging fees to visitors: attempt to have the visa process as easy as possible for visitors to enter countries without compromising on smart security; and lower the visa fees as much as possible — or even consider eliminating them. Entering Bahrain and Mozambique are two examples of costly visas and unnecessary harassment which soured my experiences in those two countries enough to the point of where I would be just fine if I never visited them again.
Idealistically, I would really like to see the day where you and I can travel anywhere in the world with few to no impediments; but with human nature being the way it is, I know that will not happen anytime soon — if at all…
All photographs ©2005 by Brian Cohen.
