It will be hilarious when the comparisons to the 1936 Olympics get made. The US will be less welcoming than the actual, historical Nazis.
That kinda highlights another of the major issues with this whole thing…
How many immigration goons speak Haitian Creole? Are they planning on running this all through online translators? How?
I’ve been living in Scotland 3 years now: I still have no idea what the locals with the real strong accents are saying half the time, and I’m only from just over the border. Plenty of Scots prefer to post their social media in regional dialect as well… Good luck checking 5 years of that for creative insults!
Anything not understood will be, along with its creator, rejected. Looking for ways around rules that do not exist or will not be enforced is a fool’s errand.
It may be news to you, but social media checks have been taking place at US immigration for years.
I have a lot of circus performer friends, from multiple countries, many of whom regularly attend Burning Man and other festivals. If someone enters the US looking suspicious (like the average circus performer) with performance equipment, it’s been routine to check if they work as a paid performer/teacher for ages; any suggestion that someone entering on a tourist visa does paid performance means entry is refused on suspicion of attempting to work illegally. The first person who told me about this was refused entry, kept in a cell overnight and sent back to Japan, because the immigration guy googled his name and found an advert for his classes. This was over 15 years ago. A few years later, a Canadian performer I know lost his career over it, as he had been working- legally- on cruise ships and similar, but was banned from even transiting through the US after being ‘caught’ planning to work illegally- his publically available Facebook account showed him doing paid gigs, and he had circus gear in his bag. Getting international work turned into a logistical nightmare after that and he gave up.
Since news of this got around, anyone in the circus community planning a trip to US festivals have created social media accounts under their real names, which they use to post mundane life updates, keep in touch with occasional boring relatives, and maybe throw in an update about how excited they are to go to a festival in the US and learn some new skills. Meanwhile, their main account, with all their paid performance work info, is under a stage name, as is any personal website.
Bring a cheap phone, and only look at or connect it to the account(s) set up to share under their real name. A page of normal looking posts, scroll down a bit, still the same, google the name, nothing of interest comes up, questions about their plans and eventually they get allowed through.
People have been doing this to US immigration for over a decade and it still works.
I cannot see that trying to extend a similar check to everyone single person entering the country, not just those deemed suspicious, and explicitly going back not just ‘a bit’ but for 5 years- potentially thousands and thousands of posts, on multiple sites -and relying on the person to accurately supply the contact details given how easy it is to sign up to with fake data, especially if you don’t have the equipment used to post on there with you. Plus emails. Plus phone numbers, which again, are not at all hard to acquire anonymously and simply not provide.
They’re going to check through a mindboggling amount of data, with no way to check if it’s all complete, in every language spoken on earth, to check for some vague concept, when the staff currently can’t manage to run checks on a few circus people and find their actively advertised businesses.
How are they planning on physically doing the checks? AI? How good are the databases in Chichewa?
Skimping on it and simply turning away every single person who has ever posted anything not easily understood by the person checking on the grounds that it could be bad is also something that would be crazy to attempt. It would mean every person on every plane flying from any country where translations aren’t readily available would be refused entry, including the plane crew. Do airports have space to keep that many people for even a few hours? Are literally thousands of people a day from every international airport going to get arrested? Are foriegn governments going to just sit back and accept thousands of their -presumably wealthier- citizens being detained for no crime? Are they going to try demand the info in advance and deny boarding? How far in advance? If it’s more than a few days, there’s another load of posts to check! And would the airlines accept that, or would they simply stop serving the US until the policy is dropped?
I’ll not argue that it’s an awful evil plan, and just the thought that they’re looking at doing it is certainly going to deter some tourists, but actually implementing this as annouced would rely on a level of competence so much higher than the current level it’s just unrealistic. It’s not been thought through at all.
The most likely situation is that it gets shouted around a lot then gets dropped down to ‘spot checks’, which would probably be pretty similar to those already happening. Maybe slightly dialled up.
I don’t know what else to say except that I’m sorry to hear that, and that I apologize for the paranoid, pridefully ignorant, and xenophobic fuckwits who are now running the country. I don’t think any of them realize that the pointlessly draconian policies they’re inflicting on international visitors could also be imposed on Americans going abroad by our former friends, but they likely don’t care. “Real Americans” have no interest in ever stepping outside the “Greatest Nation on Earth.”
Apparently this new policy doesn’t apply to Canadians.
Yet.
Rick Steeves [ETA: sorry, à guy called Cameron Stewart who writes on Steeves’s webpage] said a year ago that you might get into some interesting conversations, but that Europeans can distinguish between a horrible foreign leader and normal foreign visitors. I’ve seen other articles recently from US media thst say the same thing.
Last summer I was in one of my local pubs for lunch and two guys were at the next table, having lunch and wondering what to do for the afternoon. It quickly became apparent that they were Americans, I think in town for a wedding.
I leaned over and told them that if they wanted to walk two blocks, they could see the fossil skeleton of the biggest T-Rex ever found, bigger even than Sue down in Philly, in our local museum. They thanked me and sounded interested.
What was I supposed to do, spit in their beer and tell them to get out of the country? I want to be welcoming to visitors to my country.
(Note: rules might change if I’m ever at a social reception with the doofus ambassador who is personally carrying water for Trump.)
Correct. As of now it only will apply to ESTA visa waiver countries, including but not limited to Germany, Spain, UK, Finland, Australia, France, Greece, Hungary, New Zealand, Japan, Denmark etc.
Canadian permanent residents who come from one of those countries would also be included, but not Canadian citizens.
You are probably correct, but the damage will have been done. People will react accordingly, and will not book trips or even make plans to visit the US. This will have the effect of hanging out a big huge neon blinking sign that says “FOREIGN TOURISTS FUCK OFF”
I would hope any reasonable person would know better than to intrude on private grief 
No apologies necessary for me, I live in New Jersey, just channeling what I believe has to be the thought process for a lot of tourists.
Come on, of course — all this data harvesting? Perfect for throwing some sweet federal contract money in the direction of friendly (or at least cooperative) techbroligarchs.
Endangered, but yes.
I am not a fan… they look nice enough in photos, but they smell bad. And they lurk in the underbrush… staring at you. They are creepy that way. They are thinking… hmmm… that is a decent size fish. I wonder if I could eat him.
As events continue to unfold, the title of this thread is turning out to be an understatement. Tourism to the US from Canada is way, way down, and is likely being propped up by a combination of necessary business travel and those snowbirds who have some form of property ownership in Florida, which they probably now regret. I suspect that most people with an option are going somewhere else – anywhere but the US. Apparently America is Great Again™!
Canadian experts on travel to the US discuss difficulties; one bluntly warns : « Don’t go! »
And, getting back to my OP, the US is projected to have an overall travel trade deficit of $70B this year, after years of travel trade surpluses.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/u-s-canadian-travel-loss-9.6974240
Well, that’s not a problem. Trump has found the perfect way to address trade deficits. Tariffs! That will teach those nasty tourists.
Oh, wait…
I’ve had a lot of people in doing work on my house this week. One of them mentioned that their parents were going to Mexico for the winter, even though they already owned a place in the US. They’d rather spend the extra to avoid dealing with America as it is now.
I guess they don’t want to report their biographical info to Homeland Security on Form I-94 at the border and also pay a $30 USD fee and get fingerprinted and photographed. This is what is required for any Canadian planning to stay longer than 30 days.
Fill out anything on the form wrong? You can then be banned for entry to the US for whatever time they feel reasonable.
“Welcome to the USA, where we treat elderly tourists with lots of money like common criminals.” I guess we’re lucky they don’t demand a strip search and cavity probe.