Congress after years of lobbying by the travel and tourism community across the country, has finally begun to realize the positive impact of tourism dollars on our economy. Every visitor brings, literally, hundreds of dollars a day into the economic stream through entrance fees, sales taxes, meals, hotels, rental cars, gasoline purchases, souvenir sales and more with virtually no additional outlay.
Everyone wins when tourists visit the U.S.A. The U.S. Travel Association has been preaching this sermon for decades.
There is only one problem. The methods the United States government is introducing are out of whack and counterproductive.
If a country like Spain, Italy or Australia invited you to come and visit and then proceeded to demand that prior to visiting you had to be fully fingerprinted, had to fill out a detail questionnaire with personal information and then charged you an entrance fee to visit their country, would you think twice? I certainly would.
I already don’t like having to pay the generally $131 reciprocity fee, to enter Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Imagine if they made us jump through hoops if we wanted to visit.
That’s exactly our country’s approach to encouraging tourism.
1. Charge all visa-waiver-country visitors a entrance tax to enter the U.S.A.
2. Force visitors to fill out an intrusive entry form
3. Treat every valued visitor like a criminal
Let’s look at these step by step.
1. Charge visitor more. The new program has just passed the Senate and it will now be signed by the President.
The initiative is funded through a matching program featuring up to $100 million in private sector contributions and a $10 fee on foreign travelers who do not pay $131 for a visa to enter the U.S. The fee will be collected once every two years in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security’s Electronic System for Travel Authorization. No money is provided by U.S. taxpayers.
The plan includes not only an advertising and promotional campaign, but also the need to communicate and explain U.S. policy and procedures for entering the U.S. Past policies, U.S. Travel said, were often confusing and a barrier to encouraging travel to the U.S. An eleven member Board of Directors will be named to the Corporation for Travel Promotion along with an executive director and professional staff to manage the program.
2. Force them to fill out an intrusive questionnaire. Beginning March 20, the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) requires foreign nationals to submit their personal information via the Internet before boarding a U.S.-bound flight.
I have never had to answer any questions like this, even back in the days when I visited the evil Soviet Union or traveled to East Berlin and Eastern Europe.
In case your eyesight needs help, here are the basics.
• Have you been arrested or convicted for a crime involving “moral turpitude”? (What is the definition of moral turpitude?)
• Have you been a controlled substance trafficker? (You have got to be kidding!)
• Are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities? (Is Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on drugs themselves?)
Are you involved or have you ever been engaged in sabotage or were you a Nazi war criminal? (My name is James Bond. Of course, I ran the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Besides barely anyone is still alive who would have been, let’s say 20-years-old back in 1933 – 1945. They would be between 85 and 97 years old now.)
I am not kidding you. These are the questions that we ask everyone visiting the United States on the Visa Waiver Program. The visitor can be the mayor of Paris, the CEO of Volkswagon, the top chef in Italy, Spain’s top bullfighter or the Australian actress Nicole Kidman who played a courtesan in Moulin Rouge. They can be coming for a government meeting, to star in a film, to teach at our universities, to consummate a big business deal. They all get this same mindless questionnaire to fill out online prior to entry into the United States.
I’ve heard the defense of this online form as something along the lines of, “Other countries, like Australia do it.”
I checked into the Australian form. During the Sydney summer Olympics when I visited and on other trips when I was writing about Brisbane, Adelaide, Darwin and the outback, I don’t remember answering any questions about my past life as a Nazi concentration camp guard, my visits to prostitutes or my arrest record. Australia simply requires a passport number, birth date, flight numbers and some dates of travel.
Finally, the United States requires all visitors to waive all of their rights to question any actions by CBP.
Waiver of Rights: I have read and understand that I hereby waive for the duration of my travel authorization obtained via ESTA any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer’s determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program.
3. Treat them like a common criminal. After these astounding questions and the waiver they sign, visitors have their mug shots taken and are fingerprinted — all 10 fingers — before being allowed to enter the country. Yep. It is all included in the waiver shown below.
In addition to the above waiver, as a condition of each admission into the United States under the Visa Waiver Program, I agree that the submission of biometric identifiers (including fingerprints and photographs) during processing upon arrival in the United States shall reaffirm my waiver of any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer’s determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program.
If I was not doing this research myself, I wouldn’t believe the indignities our friendly visitors have to put up with in order to enter the United States.
We will need far more than a Travel Promotion Act that adds another tax on entry and then creates a fluffy picture of the beauty of America in order to increase tourism to our United States. We need to begin treating tourists like the visitors they are and work at welcoming them into our country rather than treating them like suspected war criminals, potential child molesters, spies, terrorists or common crooks.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
The Australian process wasn’t always so easy. The first time I visited Australia (December 1994), I had to fill out a lengthy (I thought intrusive) form when applying for a visa. The e-form process has greatly simplified things!
Is every airport going to be required to employ a translator – for how many possible languages? – in order to explain these questions? I can imagine the 75-year-old lady from East Uzbekistan being detained for hours because she has no idea what the questions mean and there’s no one there to explain them to her. What a mess!
Charlie,
Totally agree on all counts. But….
I love your writing, but did you have an editor on this? Did you not have enough coffee this morning? Rushed and not proofread this? There are way too many grammar, etc. errors.
R
This shows how out of touch the government is.
… and you wonder why the 2016 Olympics are going to Rio instead of Chicago?
The questions – they’re not new. I’ve been answering the same set of questions since 1968 when I first visited the USA. I hate to tell you guys but most people I know think the questions are simply stupid. They just laugh when they fill the form in.
Most countries simply ask name, sex, age, why you’re visiting and either your home address or a contact address in the country you’re visiting. New Zealand adds to that questions about bio hazards because they’re worried about certain crop and animal diseases and then x-rays all incoming baggage.
The USA is by no means the only country charging an entry or visa fee.
A friend of mine was complaining the other day about the entrance fees she was going to have to pay on her tour of South America later this month. I told her that that’s because we charge citizens of those countries to come visit us. She didn’t know that and was more understanding of the loss from her pocket book!
@Ralph I re-read the post. Thanks for letting me know about the problems with grammar.
Obviously at 4:30 am this morning, I wasn’t tip-top. But it wasn’t that bad, though there were errors.
Glad you agree with the meat of the article and that you like my prose. I’ll try to do better on the syntax and grammar.
I’ve answered those questions many times, and to tell you the truth they don’t bother me personally. I do agree with the OP that people think they are stupid, I mean, I’m sure everyone just marks “no, no, no..” without reading too much.
Of course it would be a shame to ask the mayor of Paris those questions, but hey, there are a lot of people that should actually answer “yes” to some of those questions, not that they would.
Now the fingerprints, pictures, and sending you to the little back room for further checking (I have 2 passports and 2 visas (student and visitor) so that happens to me every time I visit, around twice a year) is in my opinion an exaggeration, and they are checking the wrong people. I’m against racial profiling, but not against common sense!
I hate to break it to you, but you have to answer those questions on the I-94, anyway. Whether they’re intrusive or not is open for debate, but it’s not like this is anything new.
And to play the devil’s advocate on those questions – think about this scenario. A person enters the U.S. with the intention of committing some kind of crime or terrorism, and of course answers the question “no”. They then get caught in the act of trying to plan whatever it is they’re attempting to do. Now all the cops have to do is pull their immigration form, and viola – said perp has committed a felony by falsifying an immigration form, and can now be deported (or the prosecutor can use it as a bargaining chip in trying to extract a plea agreement and/or information on that person’s cohorts). I’m not saying this is a valid reason for asking these question – but I can see a logical basis for asking them.