The “Trump Slump”…Fear and Loathing on the “You’re Not Welcome Here” Trail

By: Robert Gard

 

Just over 4 months into this ordeal, and the signs of extreme stress are palpable. People around the world have taken a look at Donald Trump and decided his America is not a place they want to visit. The result has been labeled the “Trump Slump,” a drop in international tourism that’s predicted to cost the United States more than $7 billion. Experts across the travel industry have sounded the alarm that the Trump presidency, already destructive on so many fronts, may also do serious financial damage to the country’s $250 billion tourism sector. The messages of “America First”, “Build the Wall”, “get ’em out and get ’em out quickly”, and “Extreme Vetting” send a xenophobic message the world has heard loud and clear, and, unsurprisingly, international travelers are opting to stay away—and that includes the European ones, as well as Canadian travelers, who don’t want to risk detention, missed travel connections and ruined vacations, not to mention the added expense of a legal defense, should things go terribly wrong at the border.

While Trump may have suffered setbacks in some of his political efforts, the Executive Branch’s law enforcement agencies are carrying out his immigration enforcement agenda with a zeal and ruthlessness not seen in many years. Stories from across the country continue to show that DHS agencies ICE and Border Patrol are not targeting just the so-called “bad hombres,” but they are going after whomever they please, whenever they please, wherever they please, and however they please.

Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, has also declared that he seeks a “more muscular role” for his Department of Justice in supplementing the enforcement policies and structures currently being developed and implemented by General Kelly at the Department of Homeland Security and by Rex Tillerson at the Department of State. That Sessions would “want in” on the enforcement policymaking and enactment comes as no surprise, as he has been dubbed the “intellectual Godfather” of Trump’s mass deportation plans. Immigration lawyer and former President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”), David Leopold, recently posted on “Medium”, “Five Chilling Ways Senator Jeff Sessions Could Attack Immigrants as Attorney General”:

· Impose his radical, antiimmigrant ideology on decisions by the federal immigration courts;

· Expand the number of immigrants who are deported even though they qualify for a green card or asylum;

· Reduce access to legal counsel and information about immigrants’ legal rights;

· Criminalize immigrants by bringing trumped up charges against ordinary workers; and · Strong arm state and local police to become Trump deportation agents

Travel industry insiders aren’t just freaking out, they’re trying to stop the trend in its tracks. A number of countries have even issued formal travel warnings, urging their citizens to think twice about travel to the United States. Roger Dow, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, penned an open letter to Trump, as if he could be reasoned with. “Mr. President, please tell the world that while we’re closed to terror, we’re open for business,”

Travel to the U.S. is not down across all the nations of the world. Flight app Hopper found Russia is an exception to the rule, with U.S. flight search queries recently increasing 88 percent, per the Guardian. Even small decreases in tourism to the U.S. could hamper economic growth and cause job losses. Dow said a 5 percent drop in tourism would cost the U.S. economy $12 billion to $15 billion and between 500,000 and 1 million jobs. Michael McCormick, executive director and COO of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) said a 1 percent shift in business travel costs could lead to the loss of 71,000 jobs, nearly $5 billion in economic growth, $3 billion in wages and $1.2 billion in tax collections.

U.S. tourism isn’t the only industry suffering Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, our nation’s colleges and universities are also seeing a sharp downturn in foreign student applications and admissions. Application and acceptance season is underway at America’s colleges and universities. But this year, some institutions of higher learning are seeing a noticeable dip in attendance from one group purposely choosing to stay home: foreign students. Applications from international students from countries such as China, India and in particular, the Middle East, are down nearly 40 percent this year at schools that answered a recent survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Educators, recruiters and school officials report that the perception of America has changed for international students, and it just doesn’t seem to be as welcoming a place anymore.

Officials point to the Trump administration’s rhetoric surrounding immigration and the (twice) issuing of the Muslim travel ban as having an effect. “Yes, we definitely are sounding the warning,” said Melanie Gottlieb, deputy director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, adding, “We would hope that the [Trump] administration would say [to] cool the rhetoric a bit around immigration.”

Former and potential foreign exchange students told an NBC News reporter that they’re leery of what might happen to them once they step foot into the United States. In Cairo, Momen Rihan, who spent a few months as an exchange student in America and decided not to come back, said he’s been observing posts on social media from other travelers. “They say they face problems at airports when they try to check into the United States because they are Arab,” Rihan said.

Taiwanese student Vicky Sung, who is deciding whether to attend Columbia University or Arizona State University, said she’s mindful of recent attacks on foreigners living and working in the United States. In February, two Indian born men working legally in Kansas were shot and one of them killed in what federal prosecutors are calling a hate crime because the shooter allegedly said, “Get out of my country.” “Safety is a big concern for choosing which university to go to,” Sung said, “or even whether to go at all.”

But a lot is at stake, too, for the extremely competitive world of American higher education. Colleges and universities across the country heavily recruit international students to add diversity, offer a global perspective and in many cases, significantly add to the bottom line. The number of foreign students topped 1 million for the first time in 2016. Paying “full tuition,” 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.

For many years, I’ve advanced the position that so much in the immigration laws are impacted by political policy, discretion, personnel policies and executive leadership. Most immigration laws are written very broadly, and cannot be understood as to their impact until the enforcing agency issues policy memos or regulations interpreting those laws. Even after the issuance of regulations required to implement the laws, profound changes in the manner that immigration laws and regulations are carried out in the field can be effectuated without any actual changes to the underlying laws and regulations, but through a change in politics, and a shift in resources and political focus.

Tennessee-based immigration lawyer, Greg Siskind, recently posted a comment on his blog concerning what he calls “the Shadow Travel Ban” This post may be found at (http://blog.ilw.com/gregsiskind/201 7/03/31/the-shadow-travel-ban/ ), and I urge you to read the entire post (less than a page or two.) Attorney Siskind states, “I’m talking about the unfettered discretion consular officers have to deny visitor visas, student visas and several other visa types. Some of the denials are due to security and criminal issues. But most are due to INA Section 214(b) which allows an officer to deny the visa to anyone the consular officer deems likely to ignore the terms of their visa (such as by overstaying or working illegally). In some parts of the world, the vast majority of applicants for visas to the US are denied. Those would mostly be in developing countries and even people who can demonstrate solid incomes and strong ties to their countries are denied after getting interviews lasting no more than two or three minutes.

Individuals go in with meticulously documented applications and should be easily approvable, but walk out of their interviews with not a single document being reviewed and questions asked that hardly allow an officer to get a good sense of the applicant’s story.

While no one at the State Department will ever admit to profiling, that’s essentially what they’re trained to do on a daily basis as they move through the applicant lines. What is new is the recent memo from Secretary of State Tillerson which essentially blesses the concept of profiling albeit for security reasons.”

QUICK NOTES:

Recently, theWashington Post ran a story about how, due to fears of removals, lawful immigrants are deciding to go hungry rather than access public benefits. Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic reports that, across the country, a climate of fear—sparked by Trump’s executive orders on immigration enforcement, a series of highly public raids, and a draft executive order that would push families off of means-tested benefit programs—has spooked families away from the safety net. Of the 20 organizations working with documented and undocumented immigrants that Lowrey spoke with in recent weeks, 17 said they had seen legally eligible families declining to enroll or even unenrolling from programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, The Children’s Health Insurance Program (“CHIP”), free school lunch program, and The Women, Infants, Children (“WIC”) program.

“The immigration-enforcement order created chaos and fear,” said Wendy Cervantes of CLASP, an anti-poverty nonprofit, referring to aTrump plan to ramp up deportations. “The fear of immigration enforcement creates a chilling effect. We’ve seen seen this in states that have passed really aggressive and harsh anti-immigrant laws at a local level, and now we might be seeing it nationally.”

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