War on Terror Is Bad for Economy
By Mary Theroux • Monday June 20, 2011 3:34 PM PDT • 7 Comments
President Obama’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council released five “fast-action” recommendations for things the government can do that will result in 1 million jobs on a near-term basis.
Among the ideas was:
Boost jobs in travel and tourism. This industry is one of America’s largest employers, but the United States has lost significant market share. By making it easier to visit the United States through improved visa processes, we can win back market share in travel and tourism and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
The visa process, of course, was tightened up in the aftermath of 9/11—in another classic case of penalizing the innocent for gross government failure. Under the new visa directives, the wait time to receive a tourist visa can regularly exceed 100 days, including extended wait times for the now required in-person interview, at which applicants are additionally treated as suspects rather than the valued tourist and business visitors the vast majority are.
As just one example of the fall-out from the change in policy, 500 out of 1,460 international registrants for last year’s Association of Equipment Manufacturers convention in Orlando were unable to actually attend because they couldn’t obtain a U.S. entry visa in time. As the Association’s president noted:
The visa process is very slow and very arbitrary. ... We’re in a bad economy, and there’s a lot of places worldwide where you can buy equipment.
Meanwhile, those who are successful in obtaining a visa are subjected to further humiliations and interrogation immediately upon arriving in the U.S., with biometric data captured from each entrant, and passport control lines stretching for up to hours.
And as any of us who has had an encounter with these agents can testify, they are not ambassadors of welcome. Upon my most recent return from abroad, there were six agents lining the final hallway leading into the passport control hall, eying everyone who walked by and generally giving the impression of one’s arrival into a totalitarian state.
As, by even a modest definition, the U.S. now is.
Read this account and decide for yourself: 2,000 elderly British cruise ship passengers recently docked at Los Angeles for a short stop-off during a five-star cruise around America. In the words of one of them, it was “more like arriving at Guantanamo Bay.”
The passengers had paid more than $16,000 apiece for the luxury cruise, which had already docked at 9 U.S. ports—at each of which they had cleared immigration. Subjected to yet more unnecessary and petty bureaucracy, as one passenger explained:
A couple of passengers got a bit stroppy about having to go through all the rigmarole again and these petulant officials decided to take revenge.
The revenge was enacted over a 7-hour period, during which the passengers were
“herded like animals” and made to stand for hours in temperatures up to 80F with no food or water or access to lavatories.
Some are said to have passed out in the heat while others were left confused and bewildered.
When one lady asked in desperation whether she could use a bathroom, one immigration official is said to have replied: “Do it over the side, we won’t mind.”
By contrast, visit almost any other country—including those attacked by the U.S. not so long ago (e.g., Cambodia)—and the entry process is swift, clear, and friendly.
If this is how immigration officials treat wealthy, elderly, British (and thus presumably white) passengers on a luxury cruise, why should anyone any longer want to visit the U.S.?
Tags: Business, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Economics, Employment, England, Immigration, Law, Liberty, Peace, Personal Liberty, Police, The State, Uncategorized, Unemployment 
Very enlightening article. Although I am well aware of how the rights and privacy of domestic airplane passengers are routinely and increasingly violated, I did not know how much worse it is for travellers from abroad. Thanks for sounding the alarm by composing such a thought-provoking heads up.
Seymour B. | Jun 20, 2011 | Reply
You are right, from start to end, Mary. The very reason I do not go to the US more often is to avoid the humiliation of the arrival. Is just nonsense. And you did not mention what the process of obtaining the visa cost in money and time. For me it means traveling the day before to Madrid, paying the fee, wasting a whole morning trapped in the Embassy, incommunicado because they take away your cell phone while you are there.
Aparicio | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
Why not cut back on the H-1B visa program? These “temporary” visas are typically used for periods up to 8 years (6 on the visa, 2 while waiting for processing of green card or citizenship applications). With more than a quarter million green cards issued each year (65,000 authorized under the cap, with an additional 185,000 ‘exceptions’) the H-1B program may be responsible for the loss of up to 2 million high-paying, high-tech American jobs. Want to create over 1 million new high-tech jobs for Americans over 3 years? Just decline to renew any H-1B visas (750,000 jobs) and eliminate the “exceptions” (about 500,000 jobs).
The H-1B program was intended to allow American companies to bring in foreign labor to fill jobs for which no qualified Americans could be found. It has become the high-tech outsourcing program for American jobs. 21% of applications have errors or outright fraudulent statements. Companies conduct seminars to teach their managers how NOT to hire an American (methods to skirt the system). Meanwhile, since the visas are issued in a lottery, a freshout college grad in Computer Science has as much chance of coming to America as a triple PhD., Nobel Laureate. The latter may be a boon to America. The former is just cheap labor imported to take an American job.
All of this is at the behest of congress to benefit companies like Microsoft who hiring of H-1Bs and layoffs of Americans could not be more closely linked (and numbers in the thousands). But even more shocking is that the main users of this program are FOREIGN corporations who set up shop in America, bring workers from their home countries to work here, and eventually work to outsource entire segments of industry to their home countries while earning good salaries and depriving Americans of jobs here.
Be sure to let your congressional representative know how much you appreciate them selling your jobs to India.
BambiB | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
Readers, be aware it’s not the war on terrorism but the war on Americans, whose freedoms are being eroded day by day. Some are aware of the negative affects of this bogus campaign right now and the balance of skeptics will realize the magnitude of this sham in the near future.
Pathos 11 | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
America is at war, continuously; thus any treatment of the public, no matter how despicable, is encouraged and ratified by our rulers.
ralph | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
BambiB:
The notion that immigrants “take” American jobs is demonstrably untrue. As our and others’ research has shown, year after year, immigration is a net boon to the American economy. In his presentation, “Immigration, Economic Growth, and the Welfare State,” Senior Fellow Ben Powell cites “immigration increases GDP growth by about 0.2%, or $22 Billion per year. While 0.2% sounds small, compounded over time this is still a significant gain for our economy.”
Alex Tabarrok presents the “Economic and Moral Factors in Favor of Open Immigration.” Among his points,
In a nutshell, as Dr. Tabarrok shows, “the basic reason why immigrants don’t reduce the number of jobs is that immigrants both produce and consume. Immigrants buy goods as well as sell goods, so the number of jobs expands as the number of workers expand.” Beyond this, immigrants—especially highly skilled ones (see more on this, below)—have been major contributors to the creation and expansion of technology-based industries, creating thousands of new jobs.
Here’s a short video exploding these and other immigration myths:
As far as H-1B visas, new H-1B visa holders represented only 0.06 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2009, a tiny proportion of the U.S. workforce, and the quota for these visas is exhausted almost immediately each fiscal year as they are made available. American companies hire skilled foreign labor because the American public school system is not producing scientists or mathematicians. H1-B visa holders are far from “cheap labor:” the application fee for sponsoring an H-1B visa is $2000 – $3000 and requires a perhaps even more costly investment on the firm’s part in the form of time invested by human resources and legal staff. H1-B visa holders are vitally important to innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation in America. For more on H1-B visa holders, see “What impact would H-1B visa reform have on a company’s ability to create jobs and innovate?”
Finally, if you conduct a search of “immigration” on our website, you’ll find a wealth of solid research on the subject, which I hope you will find of use.
With best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Jun 21, 2011 | Reply
This is a perfect example of the frog in the boiling water. 1st it’s the seat belt law to cell phone laws. We must remember one thing,it is our fault. We vote these people into office and we give them the power.
David Wolcott | Jul 10, 2011 | Reply