There are bad ideas and then there is this terrible, no good, job-killing, bad for America idea:
Foreigners who want to visit the U.S., even for a short trip, could be forced to disclose contacts on their mobile phones, social-media passwords and financial records, and to answer probing questions about their ideology, according to Trump administration officials conducting a review of vetting procedures.
The administration also wants to subject more visa applicants to intense security reviews and have embassies spend more time interviewing each applicant. The changes could apply to people from all over the world, including allies like France and Germany.
Let’s flip the script and imagine a scenario where American travelers visiting, let’s say Paris, are asked to turn over all their social media passwords and financial records. What do you think the end result of this scenario would be?
If you guessed all-out outrage and a steep drop in tourism to Paris, you’d be correct. And that is exactly what will happen here. We know this because the Trump administration’s already bad vetting policies and threats of more “extreme” vetting are causing a drop in foreign travelers and foreign students. Both have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of jobs related to tourism and our nation’s universities, which have always sought to attract the best and brightest minds from around the world.
Thoughts on the “Trump Slump” from the well-known travel guide Frommer's:
Thus, the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an “official” travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8%. And the fall-off is not limited to Muslim travelers, but also extends to all incoming foreign tourists. Apparently, an attack on one group of tourists is regarded as an assault on all.
As far as travel by distinct religious groups, flight passengers from the seven Muslim-majority nations named by Trump were down by 80% in the last week of January and first week of February, according to Forward Keys, a well-known firm of travel statisticians. On the web, flight searches for trips heading to the U.S. out of all international locations was recently down by 17%.
A drop of that magnitude, if continued, would reduce the value of foreign travel within the U.S. by billions of dollars. And the number of jobs supported by foreign tourists and their expenditures in the United States—and thus lost—would easily exceed hundreds of thousands of workers in hotels, restaurants, transportation, stores, tour operations, travel agencies, and the like.
Emphasis added. It’s very straightforward—this president’s actions would be a massive job killer for an untold number of businesses, especially small businesses that rely on foreign tourism. In fact, tourism in the United States makes up 2.6 percent of the U.S. GDP and provides an eye-popping 7.6 million jobs.
Another disastrous side effect of “extreme vetting” is the damage to our country’s public universities. The University of California is reporting a sharp decline in applicants from foreign students:
Applications from international students to the University of California have fallen for the first time in 12 years.
The decline follows more than a decade in which the number of international applications rose by an average of 21 percent a year. It also coincides with the election of President Donald Trump.
Nationwide, universities report a drop of 40 percent and that will have a heavy impact on jobs:
The number of foreign students topped 1 million for the first time in 2016. They generated some $32 billion dollars in revenue, which supported more than 400,000 jobs, according to the Association of International Educators.
Some education professionals warn a drop in international students could lead to faculty cuts, higher tuition and the loss of programs.
"I think at this point, outreach is crucial to convince students and their parents that a U.S. education is still worth the risk," Gottlieb said.
It’s clear the xenophobic actions of a president who spent nearly two years campaigning on the promise of creating jobs is going to have the opposite effect. Not to mention the “brain drain” created by repelling the best and brightest students around the world. In 2016, six Americans won the Nobel Prize. All six are immigrants to the United States:
"I think the resounding message that should go out all around the world is that science is global," Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, one of three laureates in chemistry, told The Hill on Monday.
Stoddart, born in Scotland, credited American openness with bringing top scientists to the country. He added, however, that the American scientific establishment will only remain strong "as long as we don’t enter an era where we turn our back on immigration."
Stoddart said the United States should be "welcoming people from all over the world, including the Middle East."
When you add it all up, America cannot afford the policies of the Trump administration.