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Trump Administration Approves Tougher Visa Vetting, Including Social Media Checks (reuters.com)
The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years. From a report: The new questions, part of an effort to tighten vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, was approved on May 23 by the Office of Management and Budget despite criticism from a range of education officials and academic groups during a public comment period. Critics argued that the new questions would be overly burdensome, lead to long delays in processing and discourage international students and scientists from coming to the United States. Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.
Having been to the US a number of times we as a family have made the choice not to go there again, its simply not worth the aggravation.
We can fly to Europe via Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and other transit stops, there is no need to go via the US or even near the US. International flights may end up shifting to Canada/Mexico to attract customers.
This of course also means flying on non-US airlines.
It means we spend our money else where. We, outside the USA, get to vote with our wallets, and we are.
Become isolationist, build your walls, hell even shoot yourself in the other foot, we are no longer worried, the real harm is to the US, not us.
JFK has over 30 million passengers through each year.
That means 82,191 passengers need vetting each day.
Assuming they each take one hour (e.g. each person can do 8 per day) and you have 3 8 hour shifts, you would need 3,424 people just to handle the traffic at JFK.
And we dont even account for holidays,sick days, etc, etc. Then there will be the supervisors, computer support, Managers, payroll, etc etc etc so lets take that to 4,000 people.
Now, Where is the money to pay them coming from ?
Make them pay you say, OK fine, that will mean competing airports in Canada and Mexico will see a rise in passenger numbers because costs are lower and thats on top of all those people who are choosing to avoid the USA anyway now. This will see thousands of people jobless in the Tourism industry, tens of BILLIONS in lost overseas revenue.
How do I know this, because I am one of a growing number who are choosing to avoid the US.
So go ahead break your country. There is absolutely no law that says the US can not become a failure.
Trump has already imposed travel restrictions that have been estimated to cost more than $7B annually in lost tourism spending. These new restrictions will add to that.
More than 14 million American work in the tourism industry. That is about 200 times more than the number of coal miners.
Your post-9/11 bullshit is already keeping people out of the US. How about you do something about it? Land of the free, home of the brave my arse. Home of the scared shitless. Do you even remember the '80s? US used to carry on about how the USSR was oppressive because you needed papers to travel. Travelling in the US is worse than that now. You need to present papers, and take your shoes off, and not lock your bag, and not take any liquids with you, and so on. If your name is similar to a name on a secret list, you're denied the right to fly and there's jack shit you can do about it. US used to carry on about DDR's mass surveillance where they were paying everyone to spy on everyone else as though it was some great evil as well. Yet you now wiretap all domestic communications. You've got your secret prisons where you disappear people, you've got your leaked torture incidents (although you seem to be getting better at covering that up), you punish people for embarrassing the government rather than actually addressing the issues that make the leaks embarrassing. It's just not worth visiting the US. You get treated like a criminal at the border, and you know you're visiting the most hypocritical country on earth.
What do you think will happen to global businesses that need to be able to send people around the world.
Less air travel = less climate change. Trump is simply attempting to reverse the effects of withdrawing from the Paris Accord.