Egads: Travel To America Is Down!
Fareed Zakaria paints this as America the Unwelcoming. Just look at the examples he cites:
A tourist from New Zealand, Rick Giles, mistakenly overstayed his visa in America by a few days and found himself summarily arrested for six weeks earlier this fall. Treaty obligations say his country’s embassy should have been informed of the arrest, but it wasn’t. A German visitor, Valeria Vinnikova, overstayed her visa by a couple of days and tried to remedy the situation”so that she could spend more time with her fianc?, the Dartmouth College squash coach. Instead she was handcuffed and had her feet shackled, then was carted off to be imprisoned. She now faces deportation and a 10-year ban on entering the United States. (Thanks to AndrewSullivan .com for drawing attention to these.)
Notice how they all overstayed their visas? I don’t see where they went to INS to get an extension before the visa expired, do you? Keep in mind that we also have 12-15 million illegal aliens running around this country, so excuse us for trying to get the situation under control.
Andrew Stuttaford takes a closer look at some of the broader data:
Yes, visitors to the US fell sharply between 2000 and 2001 from 51.2 million to 47 million, but that was for reasons that need no further explanation. Totals continued to fall in the two following years – to 41.2 million in 2003. They have, however, since picked up sharply, rising by nearly 25% between 2003-06 to reach 51.1 million in that latter year. The Commerce Department is forecasting an increase to 54 million this year, a record.
Now, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that the numbers could have been higher (global tourism has, as Zakaria correctly points out, been booming), but to think that these figures in themselves represent some sort of crisis would be a mistake.
But it is always fun to manufacture a crisis where none exists.
November 19, 2007 - 08:43 PM on November 19th, 2007
Fresh Pile of Poop From Newsweek
No, I’m not talking about them hiring some nutroots twerp, rather this nonsense from Fareed Zakaria, who sees something ominous in an alleged drop in tourists visiting the United States.
November 20, 2007 - 08:52 AM on November 20th, 2007
So a kiwi come here as a tourists gets arrested for staying afew days yet they welcome those illegal aleins with open arms what kind of logic is this?
November 21, 2007 - 10:44 PM on November 21st, 2007
I’ll take “the overstayed visas and arrest and jail the border jumpers for 10+ million” Alex.
I can understand wanting to keep track of visa overstays, but I’m much more interested in sealing the border and arresting the border jumpers and drug smugglers than a bunch of date insensitive tourists. I’m not saying let them totally off the hook, but once you determine their motives, fine them, and then show them to the door. Arrest and jail the border jumpers. They’ve ENTERED this country illegally from the beginning.
December 8, 2007 - 06:39 PM on December 8th, 2007
I rocked up to INS with my problem instead of simply taking the taxi back home to Canada and that’s what I got for it.
Keep paying those taxes, Americans, it’s going to good use. Not.