Dear Secretary Clinton:
I am writing about how visitors to our country are treated. In your Sisyphean efforts to prop up our declining world power, so dedicated to its quaint, Victorian and costly (in our blood and money) gun-boat diplomacy, one cannot expect you to worry much about the visitors to our country. Yet, these days, catering to them is more important than ever before.
May I respectfully suggest that you pass this letter on to the State Department bureaucrat who is in charge of welcoming visitors? Call that person into your office for a few minutes and convey the following salient facts:
a) From time immemorial, a visit to the U.S. was everybody's dream. This is no longer true. There are now many more destinations that offer a far better vacation product.
b) The U.S. government spends less on tourism promotion than tiny Monaco. [Editor's note: The Travel Promotion Act, which was signed into law last year, is designed to provide funding for promoting travel to the U.S. but is not yet fully in place.]
c) Moreover, other countries, such as Singapore and even Vietnam, are feverishly building luxury hotels to lure the increasing flood of well-to-do Chinese. Look at Singapore's amazing new Marina Bay Sands Hotel, built exclusively for wealthy Chinese visitors (www.marinabaysands.com).
d) Your consular officials abroad and the "welcoming" officials at our airports and seaports should not look upon the visitor from abroad as a terrorist, spy or criminal until proven otherwise. After being bullied and herded by armed, uniformed security staff speaking an English nobody understands, the hapless visitor is X-rayed, patted down and fingerprinted, then forced to enter our country barefoot and clutching his sagging, beltless pants.
e) Most visitors, coming from countries with far better infrastructure than ours, are dismayed when they observe our aging, decrepit airports; our painfully slow trains; our crumbling, gridlocked highways and rusting bridges; and our filthy, smelly cabs. "Is this America?" they ask.
f) Nowadays the American traveling overseas curtails his spending to a few T-shirts, postcards and small (Chinese-made) souvenirs, whereas, for instance, the visiting Brazilian goes wild spending on Worth Avenue, Fifth Avenue and the Las Vegas Strip. We desperately need this money to make a dent in our obscene trillions of dollars of debt.
g) Our shameful unemployment includes millions of mostly unfortunates who lack skills and education and will never land a job, no matter what cynical members of Congress promise. But an increase in visitors would result in many of these unemployed finding work in hotels, restaurants and taxi cabs that cater to visitors.
Why am I telling you this? Because there is an emerging trend within certain countries to "pluck the tail-feathers off a dispirited American eagle" by imposing on our citizens entering their country as tourists the same odious bureaucratic paper chase, rigmarole and expense that our bureaucrats impose on their citizens when they visit the U.S. Some South American countries are now charging Americans a "reciprocity" entry fee: for example, a whopping $140 to enter Argentina, which is tit-for-tat in response to what we are doing to visiting Argentinians.
This destructive foolishness has to stop, because it is we who end up the losers. It is your job, Madam Secretary, to address this matter.
Rex Fritschi Rex's World Travel Consulting
Elkhorn, Wis.