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Comment by devoply | Hacker News Reader

What I found really interesting is all this shit treatment has not effected tourism to the United States. I would think there would be huge backlash to all of this, but nope US continues to be a popular spot for foreigners to visit. They don't care about the dehumanization. If there was a huge backlash they might stop to not hurt all the tourism dollars, but no they just keep on keeping on.

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Because is it really that terrible? Yeah airport security is a bit annoying and maybe you get sternly told to do something. So what?

The comments here make it sound like the TSA is committing war crimes or something.

I think it's dumb, I think it's a waste of time, I think it's ineffective.

I also think that most of the time, most people spend 5-40 minutes in line, get through it, and promptly forget about it. Expecting it to affect tourism to the US seems totally absurd to me.

Yes it is terrible. It wastes billions of dollars plus additional billions of dollars of time. It is unconstitutional. It doesnt do anything. And it purports to make us safe by making us unsafe. We have to stand in line that can easily be targeted, stands next to a barrel full of suspected explisives, walk barefoot across a dirty floor, and potentially felt up.

Hard to say how much tourism there would be in a more sane security and immigration environment.

from a 2001 low, it seems to have been on a steady upward trend to 2015, and has been flat to down since then.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/tourist-arrivals

Because the US isn't the only country doing this.

It certainly is on my list as a negative if the opportunity to holiday in the US comes up.

There are plenty of other places that are higher on my destination list, so it's unlikely to factor in any decision.

You can add me as a datapoint as well, it definitely factors into some of my decisions (eg. Should I layover in the US or somewhere with saner immigration + security controls?).

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