'America has historically been a magnet for people who aren't from here.'
'That sort of thing -- the promise of opportunity, no matter what that looks like -- doesn't grow on trees.'
'It also happens to be geopolitical gold that Trump is flushing down the toilet,' points out Sree Sreenivasan.
When you take a step back and consider all the terrible things the Trump administration has done in just 11 months, it's undeniable that there are some things to admire.
It's like admiring a piranha cleaning an entire cow's carcass, or a pandemic laying low an entire planet.
Thanks to the hundreds of executive orders, a weaker-than-ever United States Congress, and a sycophantic supreme court, Trump and his team have inflicted lasting damage on our country, our citizens, and our society.
Heck, there are even some things that make sense when seen through the twisted mind of Stephen Miller, J D Vance and their ilk.
- They hate brown and black people, so no immigration from most countries (external link)
- They think alliances and friendships drain resources, so they withdraw from treaties.
This is all spelled out in Trump's recently published national security strategy [link to PDF (external link)]
- They think unelected bureaucrats have too much power, so they fire 300,000 federal workers (external link)
Again, when they say what they will do, believe them. Even if the GOP loses in 2028, the damage will take decades to undo.
New rules announced for tourists visiting the US are yet another in a stream of moves that make no sense and actively cause harm.
Social media histories have been part of tourist applications for some time, but now the State Department wants users to submit their past five years' of social media (external link) history to enter the US as a tourist, even for those from the 42 countries in the Visa Waiver Program (and therefore whose citizens don't need a visa to enter the US).
That's just the start.
Here's the additional info you'll need to give as a tourist eligible for the Visa Waiver Program (including from EU, UK, Australia, Japan, and others, as spotted by Arnaud Bertrand @rnaudbertrand (external link) on the state department (external link) site):
- All social media accounts from the last 5 years.
- All your biometrics: Face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris
- All your phone numbers from the last 5 years
- All your e-mail addresses from the last 10 years
- IP addresses and metadata from your submitted photos
- Names of your family members (parents, spouse, siblings, children)
- All your family members' phone numbers from the last 5 years
- Your family members' dates of birth
- Your family members' places of birth
- Your family members' residences
- All your business phone numbers from the last five years
- All your business e-mail addresses from the last 10 years
Of course, if you do need a visa and aren't from a country on the VWP, the requirements are going to be far more drastic.
All of this will further turn people off from coming to the US.
On top of all this, there are plans to check visa applicants for diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other potential health risks.
Even the most Trump-admiring European will have to think twice about putting themselves through the wringer, especially if they have to pay a few hundred bucks extra to visit the Grand Canyon (external link).
It's all for naught if you forgot your work e-mail from 2021 or your landline office number from 2017.
This will stifle free speech and serve as a way to censor foreigners -- all, again, straight from the strongman playbook.
Trump must genuinely detest the tourism industry to reject all that revenue. He was involved in tourism through his casinos before he went bankrupt six times in an industry where the house always wins.
The US is expected to have lost several million tourists by the end of the year, at a time when global tourism is up five percent.
And the US is forecast to be the only major economy among 184 analyzed by the World Travel and Tourism Council to see a decline in international visitor spending in 2025.
It's costing tens of billions of real-world dollars, but the hit to the brand costs way more than that.
I don't have any illusions about the utter stupidity governing our national political conversation at the moment, but America has historically been a magnet for people who aren't from here.
That sort of thing -- the promise of opportunity, no matter what that looks like -- doesn't grow on trees.
It also happens to be geopolitical gold that Trump is flushing down the toilet.
The prudent lesson to be learned here ties to the wider immigration thuggery being meted out by the federal government.
If the government will do it to people who are here but not from here, they will absolutely do it to everyone.
In the new national security strategy I linked to above, the administration uses the term 'civilizational erasure' when discussing Europe.
This is code for the whole white supremacist trope of 'white genocide'. It's really that simple.
This document is Congressionally mandated, and is the official stance of the office of the President.
That's right, this is all being done in our name.
Sree Sreenivasan is a leading tech expert based in New York City. He is the co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association. You can find him on Twitter at x.com/sree
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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