Tourist experts said a series of significant arrests and detention of tourists is likely to cause a major recession in tourism to the United States.
Several Western tourists have recently been rejected at the US border on increasingly thin ground under the crackdown on Donald Trump’s immigrants. Some of them were tied up and detained in detention centres in poor condition for weeks.
Germany updated its travel guidance for travel to the US, warning that breaking admission rules could lead to refusals as before, as well as arrest or even detention. It appears he has not committed any crimes or obvious violations of US visas or immigration rules, including one US green card holder detained at Boston’s Logan Airport.
The UK Foreign Office has also stepped up its advice to warn the risk of arrest after Becky Burke, a Welsh tourist who was backpacking all over the United States, stopped at the border with Canada and was detained in detention facilities for three weeks. Last week, members of the British punk band, the British submarine, were denied entry and detained after landing at Los Angeles International Airport.
Even before recent detention, forecast visits to the country this year had been revised downwards from the expected 5% increase to a 9% decline, particularly by Tourism Economics, an industry oversight group that “polarizes Trump administration policy and rhetoric” over tariffs.
The drop-off was predicted to lead to a $64 billion shortfall in US tourist trade.
“We’ve had a dramatic change in our outlook,” Adam Sachs, president of tourism economics, told The Washington Post. “You’re looking at an economic engine that’s far weaker than what would otherwise have been because of the tariffs as well as the rhetoric and condescending tone around it.”
The decline is most prominent from neighboring Canada, where Trump has threatened with crippling tariffs and repeatedly threatened to annex. According to Canadian government statistics, the number of Canadians returning on the streets from the US on the road fell 23% in February, the previous year, while air traffic fell 13%.
This week, the Canadian actor made the headline when US authorities revealed that they had handcuffed her and moved her to a detention center.
Neri Kala Silraman, an entrepreneurial expert at Oxford University, told Fast Company that travelers currently consider themselves in the US.
“Even if you get a visa, you risk being detained or denied,” she said.
The climate has become further evidence this week as Denmark and Finland issued warning advice to trans travelers. The change in U.S. State Department rules was spurred by a Trump administration decree that only two genders were recognized. The Danish Foreign Ministry advised travelers to contact the US embassy prior to their trip using the gender-designated “X” on their passport, but Finland warned that travelers with gender-changed may not be able to enter.
Despite students and academics from India and the Middle East also holding valid visas, recent countries and academics have also been detained, but the recent episodes are even more impressive as they involve countries that have been allying in the United States for many years. While visitors from many regions have long been difficult to enter the United States, immigration officers have traditionally been more generous towards travelers from the Allied Powers.
Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Services Commission, a nonprofit that supports immigration, told the AP that Western Europe and Canada’s travelers are unprecedented at the southern border to detain such regularity.
“It’s definitely rare that these cases are so close, and the rationale for binding these people is pointless,” he said. “The only reason I see is that there’s a much more enthusiastic anti-immigrant vibe.”
