AMERICA THE EXCEPTIONAL - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 259

“But after a week that went away. I felt angry and closed in and that lasted the rest of
my time there.”
Another visa victim whose fame spread across the Internet was Valeria Vinnikova, a
young German woman and star squash player who landed in jail for misreading the ex-
piration date for her visitor's permit. She had come to the United States to see her fiancé,
Hansi Wiens, the squash coach at Dartmouth College. When she asked for a renewal, of-
ficials at the border station in Maine discovered the mistake, handcuffed her, shackled her
ankles and took her to jail with the intention of deporting her. The squash community was
up in arms; a Vermont public radio station, newspapers, and local protests as well as high-
powered lawyers hired by Mr. Wiens convinced the Department of Homeland Security
that Ms. Vinnikova could be released. She and Mr. Wiens did marry, and as Valeria Wi-
ens, she was the top Dartmouth woman squash player in the 2010-2011 season.
Most of the uproar over these ham-fisted violations was coming from countries with the
wealthiest tourists. The tourism industry's study confirmed that the tourists avoiding the
United States were those who were the highest spenders. After the new security policies
were imposed, there was a 20.7 percent drop in German tourists, a 19.2 percent drop in
French tourists, a 7.6 percent drop in British tourists, and a 23.3 percent drop in Japanese
tourists.
These foreigners still took vacations, but to China, India and Turkey, or to Morocco and
Brazil, and in record numbers. The decline in the value of the dollar in the last year has
helped attract more European visitors, happy to take advantage of the bargain-basement
prices for an American vacation, and helping bring tourism back to the level reached be-
fore the attacks. But half of the tourists traveling to the United States came from Canada
and Mexico, visitors who on average spend about one-tenth of what other foreign tourists
spend.
For the foreigners who needed a visa to visit the United States, the frustration was the
highest. After the September 11 attacks, the United States required would-be tourists to be
interviewed in person at an American embassy or consulate, which in continent-size coun-
tries like Russia can pose a significant burden. Russians often had to travel over 1,000 miles
to be interviewed with no promise of a visa. The wait for an interview appointment could
be months long. In India and Brazil two months' wait for an interview was routine. Ch-
ina had a similar backlog. In Singapore it was over one month. This was for all travel: an
essential business trip or a honeymoon in Hawaii. All of that pales in comparison to what
was required of men from Muslim-majority countries. They had to fill out questionnaires
with details about people they planned to see, their relatives and their bank accounts, be-
sides supplying photographs and being fingerprinted.
This new policing of the American border stood in stark contrast to the opening of bor-
ders across Europe, Asia and Africa; with the growing sophistication of the Internet, some