As more countries advise their citizens to think twice before traveling to the United States, it won’t be long before American businesses and workers feel the economic impact of isolationism.
In 2019, the governments of Uruguay, Japan and Venezuela issued travel warnings for the U.S. due to mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio which killed almost three dozen people.
While the Uruguayan government has lifted its official travel warnings to the U. S. from six years ago, the South American country still cautions its citizens to be wary of America’s violent crime rates and extreme racism.
Violence, racism, rollbacks on civil rights, book bans, soaring inflation, anti-intellectualism and punitive tariffs are tarnishing this country’s image the world over. Why travel to the United States when you can plan your next trip to beautiful, immigration-friendly Uruguay? Americans need to know their ranking in the global index of democracies.
Uruguay recently achieved status as a “full democracy”: Uruguay reached 14th place globally, whereas the United States is now considered a “flawed democracy” and was ranked at 36th place on the Democracy Matrix scale in 2020. According to the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, Uruguay is one of the safest and most welcoming destinations for LGBTQ+ travelers.
Go in late September to experience the Montevideo Pride parade, which attracts more than 30 thousand people a year!
Germany, Canada, and the U. K. are now advising their travelers against visiting the United States. So much for having allies! And it won’t just be hotels and restaurants burdened by a lack of revenue—whole cottage industries have evolved around the tourism and hospitality industries.
Spas, for example, offer high-end services inside luxury hotels, which attract well-heeled tourists. Massage therapists, hair stylists, poolside attendants, baristas, bakers, bartenders, cashiers, caterers, delivery drivers and more will lose their jobs. The tourism industry has always been unpredictable, but thanks to President Donald Trump, it’s more precarious than it has ever been—traveling to America is now presented as a dangerous and hostile endeavor.
Isolationism, bigger and better tax breaks for billionaires and the unraveling of social safety nets such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps could easily erode the middle class while turning America into a country of polarized economic extremes—a minority determined to protect self-interests and exponential wealth, don’t-give-a-damn-people living in gated communities, while the majority is subsumed by poverty and a daily struggle just to survive.
The recent arrests and detentions of Lennon Tyler, a U.S. citizen, Lucas Sielaff, Tyler’s German fiancé, and German tourist Jessica Brösche are a national disgrace and a harbinger of more abuses of power to come from the United States Border Patrol. Sielaff was only 22 days into his 90-day tourist permit when he and Tyler were detained at the U.S. border crossing after enjoying a short stay in Tijuana, Mexico.
Tyler was handcuffed and fettered to a bench. Her dog, recovering from surgery, was left alone in a car for hours. Sielaff was sent to a grim detention center where he was held without cause for 16 days. Sielaff was allowed to leave the center only after Tyler agreed to buy her fiancé a one-way ticket back to Germany for $2,744.
Another German tourist who will likely never return to the U.S. is Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist. Brösche was entering the U.S. with an American friend—the two attempted to cross the U.S. Border via San Diego. Brösche’s crime? The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accused the artist of entering the U.S. on a previous occasion and claimed she worked while traveling with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) program, which only allows foreigners to visit the States, not work here.
Did selling some tattoos make Brösche a threat to our national security? Did she really need to be retained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center for over a month, including a week in solitary confinement where she pounded on the walls until her knuckles were bloodied? The company that owns the detention center denies the existence of solitary confinement at its facility.
Otay Mesa is owned by CoreCivic Inc, the world’s largest private prison corporation. In 2022, CoreCivic Inc’s CEO Damon Hininger received a salary of $5,159,741, with $2,319,591 paid to Hininger in cash. Apparently, incarcerating anybody and everybody can lead to a lucrative career.
Trump likes to fashion himself as more of a businessman than a politician but his true calling is for bombastic self-promotion. Why do the President’s followers see him as such an astute icon of no-nonsense economics when so many of the man’s businesses have failed, including Trump University and the outlandish Trump Ice bottled water enterprise?
Now, Trump is running the country like he ran his businesses into the soil, one greedy ill-advised swipe at a time. Pushing away our allies, threatening any agency that doesn’t directly benefit the wealthy, even kicking aside the welcome mat to tourists who can fuel our economy. Electing Donald Trump was a bad idea on so many levels, but on a fundamental level, he really is, and always has been, a bad businessman. America cannot afford Donald Trump.
