My trip to the USA in 2016 was one of the most harrowing, dehumanising, and humiliating experiences of my life. And I’m talking specifically about the actual journey, i.e. after the already lengthy, painful process of acquiring a visa.
They treated me like a terrorist. I had to be escorted by 2 armed big dudes around the airport, and they flipped their shit when I reached for my phone to tell my brother it’d be a while before I can come out (just so he wouldn’t worry.) They went through my bag and were handling everything SUPER gently, asking if it was “safe” for them to touch it.
They then confiscated my passport, walked off, and literally never returned it to me. I spent hours asking various members of airport staff what to do because I was screwed. Thankfully, eventually one of them found it in a drawer and gave it back to me.
I was a minor BTW. I have had no desire to repeat the experience since.
Honestly, I wish I was in your shoes because you get to leave this place.
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This is not ok or normal…
Not new either. There is no such thing as “normal” to me, because one will have so much privilege versus someone who doesn’t have any. For one, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act more than a century ago.
The “visa integrity fee” applies to all visitors who need nonimmigrant visas, which includes tourists, business travelers and international students.
The fee is paid when the visa is issued, according to the provision.
Every international business meeting and conference just cancelled. Visits to Disney World plummet.
Who needs visas: https://brilliantmaps.com/visa-free-usa/
It’s only to prevent poor people from South America, Africa, Eastern Europe/Asia. Europe/Japan/Australia is still free to go there.
Apparently it’s a big thing in South America to go to Disney World. Family of 4 just added $1k. It’ll make you think twice.
When I flew back from Brazil last year to Orlando, almost the entire plane was families with kids, a lot of which were wearing Disney merch. I bet that flight will soon be much less full as $250 is currently almost R$1,400 per person. R$5,500 additional for a family of 4 is a LOT of money in Brazil.
Disney tickets are fucking expensive too. It’s like $150 a day most months, so if they still come, they aren’t going as many days (if at all).
It’ll make you think twice.
So will the lottery of a lucky few people being sent to their new home in El Salvador.
So does that add up to 3 thinks, or multiply to 4 thinks?
That depends how many thinks it takes to get to the answer “it’s not worth going”. Some people will need a lot of thinks to get there.
South Sudan, and maybe rwanda
So a good chunk of people that would be interested in the World Cup…. Yet another reason not to come for them. FIFA is practically going to have to give away tickets to get people to show up at this rate
Being in the US even if FIFA gave me a ticket I’d burn it instead of going.
Professor at a large Canadian university here- interest in our EFL study tours from Europe, Latin America, and East Asian countries has skyrocketed this year as MANY of our partner universities are cancelling (or placing on indefinite hiatus) their US programs.
Europeans still get harassed and randomly arrested. Even Canadians still does.
It’s not going to stop people from Europe etc., but a lot of people might reconsider their holiday plans if on top of everything they have to pay these steep fees.
But also includes China, one of our largest sources of tourism…
Well well, my mortal enemy has reappeared. Jk, hope you have a great weekend.
$250 is a rounding error for most international business travelers. That’s the cost of one moderately nice business dinner for 3 people. Between airfare, hotels, and meals, that’s less than 10% of the cost of almost all international business trips, with the possible exception of some quick jump from Toronto to Detroit for a lunch meeting.
Same for a lot of international leisure travelers.
This is a filter to keep ‘the poors’ away
For 1 person you could, but send over a team and it just added up. You’d do it only if you really need to woo a customer, something that directly adds to the bottom line. If it’s for training or a casual meeting, why would you? I know the perception is companies have endless money but they really don’t and they pinch pennies plenty. Travel adds up.
I work for a company that has 6 figures of employees.
We travel to the USA regularly. This will immediately get flagged and bump the overall travel cost.
The percentage doesn’t change for a team vs individual. 3 people also need 3 plane tickets, 3 hotel rooms, etc.
The boss doesn’t care about the percentage, they care about the bill. The total amount.
I am one of the bosses. I’ve been around lots of businesses that do this kind of thing, including tiny startups.
I’m telling you for most businesses, if they’ve bothered to send someone on a business trip that costs $2500+ per person for an important reason, they aren’t going to cancel it over $250. That’s foolish.
Business travel elasticity has traditionally been around 0.4, meaning business travellers will tolerate higher fees with only a small drop in demand. But there would still be a drop.
What no one has mentioned here so far is that the $250 additional visa fee is refundable. But it’s not automatically refunded. You have apply for it after meeting some basic conditions. So for businesses, it’s really a much smaller administrative cost.
So far the process for applying for the refund hasn’t been established. So it’s all a bit of a hot mess still.
Fun part is that if the fee is refundable, but requires a process, then some company travel policies might stick such a fee with the employee if they fail to correctly do the process to get the refund. In such a company it might be one more thing for an employee to think about declining travel because they might personally get stuck with the bill.
Ironically cash strapped startups might not care like a big multinational would.
Travel expenses in a bearaucracy can get weird and people who don’t care about the business case are in charge of travel expenses, and they only get recognition by cutting costs, often in stupid ways.
I worked at a company like that and to give an example of the results of such a bearaucracy, they had this 20 thousand dollar product that shipped maybe 500 units a year. For some reason they became fixated on if they could delete a 25 cent part to reduce cost. The team sized the regulatory work needed to evaluator and presented the 60 thousand dollar estimate and figured that would be the end of it, no way you would spend 60k to maybe cut total company cost by 125 dollars per year. To their surprise the project was approved, they did the work, and confirmed the 25 cent part was still needed to be in compliance with some government regulations…
I already said it’s not about 1 person, it’s about a team. I see you’re finally adding the caveats “for an important reason”, that’s what I’ve been saying all along. Now you just have to add the other things I’ve been saying: For training and random conferences, it adds up. It’s about the total cost. Etc. Ok I think this has reached its end point, ciao.
A lot of company travel policies are strangely stingy on cost.
But even before this, business travel has been diminished. I’ve been a part of planning for a particular conference in the fall. It usually has a lot of European presenters and lots of meetings among international companies. There’s been a bit of a scramble because most of the people that were expected to speak are not going to travel to the US. Our company is spending a bit more to send people over to key clients in Europe near that time to replace the typical meet up at the conference. People were already nervous about Trump’s ICE enough to declare the US to not be approved for business travel.
International tourism is just being screwed all over the place.
Yeah other than Europeans and Canadians but they don’t need a fee to discourage them as it is
People still want to go to the USA?
So as a Canadian here is yet another reason to never visit the newest Oblast USA…
Russia sold Alaska to USA, and instead of buying it back, they took the whole USA to themselves. Now it’s called Amerika Oblast.
Putin prefers to call it “Amerika Oblast”.
we… all living in Amerika… Oblast… coka cola… Wonder bra… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM
Canadian Citizen will not need Visa thou. So this does not apply.
😂😂😂 they ticket mastered tourism.
It just keeps getting dumber.
Just forgot about the monopoly part
They enshitified their country 💀
You can just use that $250 to get pegged by an escort and have a better experience.
250 for 10 mins work sounds like a good time. I should change career paths.
do not come to the united states, you safety, dignity, and sense of self, is not protected by the trump administration
Oh, sure it is. Now with the premium subscription for only a one time fee of $5mil you can be assured your safety is in the rights hand. At least until the goal post moves again. Oh, and we both know you can just buy dignity now, right? Right?
So cooked.
Still won’t protect you from being whisked off the street, sent to an internment camp for months, then being deported to a 3rd country, and being banned from ever coming
vanback to the US.The way things are going, US will enact an optional $1000 “anti-deportation” Visa fee for tourists that want added safeguards against kidnapping.
We already have “TSA Precheck” which is just a bribe to tell the authorities to not look so closely at your bags and shoes.
This fee is paying for that service.
A van you say…what van?
As well as spend 5-50000 days in custody anywhere from seatac to the Everglades concentration camp to the el Salvador concentration camp. The US occupied Guantanimo Bay facility is also on the table, though camp X ray is unlikely to be available
Boy am I looking forward to the World Cup next year. If things keep trending this way it will be one of the most enjoyable cluster fucks I’ll have ever witnessed.
Here’s a reminder that the Olympics was held in Nazi-controlled Berlin, and a team of 18 black athletes from the US thoroughly trounced Hitler’s “master race” talking points by sweeping the medals.
The black athletes then had to return to the US, where segregation was still the norm; many of them struggled to support themselves afterwards, because racism kept them from being hired into any decent jobs.
Anecdotally, they were treated better in Nazi Germany than 30’s America.
Really tells it all.
Anecdotally, they were treated better in Nazi Germany than 30’s America.
Because they were US citizens. While the US has some pretty… ugly history. If you think Nazi Germany would have treated a random black citizen better than what they got in the US you are absolutely delusional. The only reason they weren’t sent to camps with the Jews was because the population was deemed too insignificant to be worth the effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany
It’s still irony. Like rain on your wedding day
No, you’re thinking of rai’iain.
Thanks to wwii and the experience of black soldiers, Paris became a hot-spot for jazz because so many us musicians would come play there to escape the racism at home.
And the French back then were fucking racist, just nowhere near as bad as the Americans.
The Nazis got their methods from American segregation laws
…and eugenics.
Nice track record at FIFA
Russia 2018
Qatar 2022
USA 2026
Morocco 2030
KSA 2034
2038?
Pyongyang
Gaza 2042
Yemen 2038
What is KSA?
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
It’ll be held elsewhere probably.
It should be interesting to see the attendance numbers for similar events in the U.S. vs other North American countries
The attendance numbers will be:
“the biggest ever. YUGE. We have so much… The people.” - official FIFA statistics
I’m sure this will do wonders for the already declining US tourism industry.
Even if they would pay me $250, I wouldn’t want to go there.
Cha-ching! There is nothing more to america than money. It’s money all the way down.
I believe Netanyahu has nominated Trump for the “Tourism person of the year” award
And it means a lot coming from him.
