DAMAGE TO THE US
Going after visitors in this fashion damages the US most of all. Companies will suffer if ordinary business travellers worry that they will have to answer confusing questions about what counts as “work”. Tourism accounts for 2.5 per cent of the US economy, and it will struggle if fear keeps away high-spending Europeans.
And deporting students and researchers isn’t a good idea, either. America has led the world in science, innovation and industry precisely because it attracts the best people.
Harvard’s Kseniia Petrova isn’t working on cancer detection any more, because she’s in a facility in Louisiana with her visa cancelled – for an offence, travelling into the US with biological samples, that is normally accorded only a minor fine.
The US worked as the centre of research and innovation because, even as a visitor, you had rights there. Take that away, replace it with a system where you constantly feel at the mercy of apparatchiks who take pleasure in tormenting you, and American universities will be as attractive to foreign talent as, say, China’s. I started avoiding trips to the mainland and Hong Kong some years ago, but I never dreamed I would one day put the US in the same category.
A US that cuts itself off from the world will be one that is less vibrant, less understood and less loved. An America nobody wants to visit would no longer be the centre of the world.
