Leveraging President Obama’s Executive Order for Improved Tourism in the United States
Tzung-Lian Tzeng, Political Science Visiting Scholar, Duke University Gene L. Brothers and Duarte B. Morais, PRTM, North Carolina State University Every year, tens of millions of tourists from all over the world come and visit America. Although the United States economy began to slow significantly in 2007 due to the related financial problems such as real-estate slump and gas prices, the U.S. tourism and travel industry is still a substantial component of U.S. GDP and employment, representing 2.7% of GDP and 7.5 million jobs in 2010 [i] . However, international travel to the United States accounts for a small portion of this industry (16%) [ii] , and our international competitiveness has decreased from 2000 to 2010 (from 17% to 11% of total inbound travel) [iii] . President Obama’s recent executive order proposes the streamlining of non-immigrant visa applications and the processing of visit requests [iv] ; factors that most tourism observers have noted as major constraints limitin