Tourists Not Coming to the U.S. For Some Reason, Wonder Why That Is

It should not be that hard, in theory, to sell people from other countries on visiting the United States for a couple of weeks. Our cities and towns are home to some of the best food and music in the world, and our landscape is full of natural beauty, from majestic mountains and valleys to at least four or five good beaches.

Despite all of that, the AP reports that international tourism to the U.S. is somehow declining:

The U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday that 6.1 million international visitors traveled to the U.S. last September, down 5 percent from the same month in 2016.

It’s the fifth month in a row with fewer arrivals compared to the same month a year earlier.

Overall, according to the AP, preliminary data showed that tourism from January to September 2017 was down nearly 4 points from the same nine-month period in 2016. The exception to the rule, apparently, is Canada, from which there was a four point jump in tourism from the first nine months of 2016 to 2017. 2017 was actually the second year in a row where tourism has fallen. From 2015 to 2016, there was a two percent drop in foreign travel to the United States.

It’s an absolute mystery why someone from another country would not want to visit the United States. One thing is for sure, however: it can’t be attributed to the fact that a major presidential candidate who also happened to be an internationally recognizable figure spent over a year blaming all of America’s problems on “foreigners.” Or the fact that then, when he became president, he proceeded to implement policies discouraging immigration and foreign travel which targeted, specifically, 57 million Latinx Americans, 467 million people from Central and South America, and the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.