I just absorbed some sobering statistics, courtesy of Fareed Zakaria's excellent column "Hassle and Humilation" in the February 26 issue of Newsweek magazine, about the state of our International visitor visa process and the negative impact it is having on business travel and tourism.
Apparently, the situation is getting so bad that many important meetings scheduled to be held in America are being passed up by International business travelers due to an "increasingly demeaning process for visa applications."
Prepare to sober up: According to the piece, a group of Arab leaders recently landed at John F. Kennedy airport to attend a meeting of the Arab and American Action Forum, launched last September at the Clinton (as in Bill Clinton) Global Initiative meeting in New York: The idea: to bring together 100 young Arab leaders from all walks of life and introduce them to a similar group of Americans. The Arab backers are all pro-American, pro-business individuals who have attended American universities and who have spent extensive time in the U.S.
According to Fareed: "the first group of participants, mostly CEOs of large companies, were pulled out of the regular immigration lines...made to stand for two to five hours as Department of Homeland Security officials grilled them {about} why they had come to America, and whether they had any experience using weapons, what they thought of the Iraq war, and other such questions."
And if you think this is just an Arab issue, when "Discover America, a group set up by the tourism industry to encourage travel to America, polled 2,000 randomly selected international travelers and asked them "'which one location on the map is the worst'" in terms of visa hassles and nasty immigration officials, the United States topped the list by far." If you're thinking they were probably anti-American to begin with, 72% still had a overall favorable view of the United States when asked.
The impact of all this hassle: "Total international arrivals into the United States declined 10 percent between 2000 and 2004, and business travel has declined 10% in the last 2 years...Once No. 1, the United States has dropped to third as a travel destination."
What's more: "Over the last 14 years, global tourism has been thriving, having increased by 52 percent. But America's share has been declining, down 36 percent in the same time frame...with travel and tourism...employing 17 million people and generating $105 billion in tax revenues."
So, what are we to do while we wait and wait and wait for our State Department to significantly improve the situation? Continue Reading...
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