It’s not yet made it to law, but it’s waiting. In the Visa Waiver Program, there’s a passage that allows the US to collect a fee to pay for administrating the Visa Waiver Program. To wit:
(3)Electronic travel authorization system
(A) SystemThe Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall develop and implement a fully automated electronic travel authorization system (referred to in this paragraph as the “Systemâ€) to collect such biographical and other information as the Secretary of Homeland Security determines necessary to determine, in advance of travel, the eligibility of, and whether there exists a law enforcement or security risk in permitting, the alien to travel to the United States.
(B) Fees
The Secretary of Homeland Security may charge a fee for the use of the System, which shall be—
(i) set at a level that will ensure recovery of the full costs of providing and administering the System; and
(ii) available to pay the costs incurred to administer the System.
That much is law. Now, tourism to the USA has been dropping, so the US Travel Association has had to think about how to counteract this. They could have had a look at Australia, which recently dropped the AUD 20.00 fee for their equivalent of the Visa Waiver Program as one incentive to visitors. But no: that would be to straightforward for the land of innovative business models. The clever folks at the US Travel Association figured that since the US is levying a fee anyway, they might as well make visiting aliens pay a little more to finance promotion for travel to the US. Yup, they’ll pay to get in so that the US can tell their friends they should come, too, probably with slogans such as “America: Where Travel Security Is Less Of A Pain In The Rear Than You Thought,” judging from the wording. (See Sec. 5 for the fee bit.)
Note, however, that the US aren’t the only country to make visitors pay for promotion of the place they’re visiting. Some Swiss cities levy a “city tax;” many towns levy a “Kurtaxe,” which is meant to pay for infrastructure that benefits the tourism industry. It seems like an odd form of subsidy, no matter how you turn it.
Florida does it, too. Much of our economy is based on tourism — and we’re now experiencing some of the reasons why that might not be such a good idea. We have a hefty tourist tax, seemingly inspired by the “tax the rich” thinking that is so rampant. Tourists may not be rich, but they don’t vote here. Except with their feet, a factor it’s easy to forget until it bites you.
The land of the fee and the home of the craven, sometimes I think. (I love my country, really I do; otherwise, I wouldn’t make fun of it.)
For some reason I am reminded of the promotion Rochester, NY did many years ago, a huge advertising push with the brilliant slogan, “Rochester: It’s got it!” I find advertisers’ minds as incomprehensible as politicians’, sometimes.
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Looks like spam, I know – but without any useful link (useful in spammer terms), so I’ll approve the comment. Benefit of tiny doubt.
Somebody has pointed out that the US Travel Association link (tia.org) no longer worked, so I’ve fixed it. The Travel Promotion Act was signed into law March 4, 2010, according to a statement from the US Travel Association. It still uses the same goofy economics of having tourists paying for promoting tourism, but I guess that’s what happens in all industries. A part of the price of each box of corn flakes goes toward Kellogg’s ads, it’s just not as obvious as taxing folks with a visa waiver.