Most Americans would welcome vaccinated tourists from around the world

This week, the United States announced that it would reopen its borders to vaccinated visitors in November, relaxing a major travel restriction put in place with the aim of stopping the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A YouGov poll of 1,000 U.S. adults indicates that there is broad support for allowing vaccinated tourists from all parts of the world into the country. Of a dozen countries they were asked about, Americans said they are most willing to welcome their neighbors from Canada into the country.

Half of U.S. adults (49%) support allowing visits from vaccinated tourists from Canada, and another 23% of Americans would welcome all Canadian tourists regardless of their vaccination status. While Canadians are able to enter the U.S. by plane, the land border into the U.S. will remain closed to them.

There is similar enthusiasm for allowing tourists to visit from certain European countries, including Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain. There is more opposition to allowing visitors from two countries with which the U.S. has been in recent policy conflict: Iran and China. About three in 10 Americans oppose visits from all tourists from these two countries (33% and 30%, respectively).

Democrats are especially likely to want foreign visitors to be vaccinated. About two-thirds of Democrats only want to allow vaccinated tourists into the country (ranging from 60-68% for each country), while Republicans are less concerned about visitors’ vaccination status.

Most Republicans (56%) oppose visits from all travelers from Iran, with about half feeling the same way about tourists from China.

See the toplines and crosstabs from this YouGov poll

Methodology: 1,000 U.S. Citizens, aged 18 and over, were surveyed for this poll on September 20 - 24, 2021. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in Internet panel using sample matching. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2016 American Community Study. The sample was weighted based on gender, age, race, education, news interest, and 2016 Presidential vote (or non-vote). The margin of error for the entire sample is 3.4%

Image: Getty