Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking, is Tourist Visa policy in the US, or as administered by American Embassies and Consulates abroad - because they are primarily the ones who have to apply relevant law and policy - is it costing Americans money? What are we talking about here? 

Well, I thought of making this video after reading a recent post on Twitter actually, which I'll put a link in the description below because we used the photo from that post to go ahead and make the thumbnail here. But quoting directly: "For $1 Lost, $2.20 Gone: The Multiplier Effect of Declining Tourism in the U.S.

-  Lost in inbound tourism will cause further unemployment throughout the travel supply chain. 

- The impact of declining tourism is invisible and indirect, yet profound.

Travel and tourism contributed 2.6 trillion to the economy last year and supported more than 20 million jobs. It also contributed more than 585 billion in tax revenue annually, accounting for almost 7% of all government income. The travel and tourism sector has been a reliable driver of federal state and local tax receipts. According to the US Department of Commerce, new international arrivals data for March 2025 reveal a sharp and widespread drop in inbound travel from many of the country’s key source markets. UK arrivals, one of the US's most important source markets down nearly 15% year over year. Germany and other significant source markets plunged more than 28%; South Korea down almost 15%." And South Korea is one of the few countries in East Asia which has a visa waiver program with the United States where folks can actually utilize a waiver rather than having to go through the whole Tourist Visa process. 

As we have discussed in other videos, section 214b of the Immigration and Nationality Act creates this impetus on the part of the Consular Officer; they have to use this 'strong ties - weak ties' analysis when ascertaining whether or not someone is eligible for a Tourist Visa; basically they have to decide if this person's using the Tourist Visa to go to the United States and live. Frankly I think that the policy is antiquated, and I think it is costing the American taxpayer frankly, folks that have businesses that could benefit from inbound tourism, I think it costs them a lot. I've mentioned this before. There was a blog years ago, it was called, Madame de Console, and it was an anonymous blog done by a woman who was a Consular Officer. I never could quite ascertain exactly where, I believe she was a female because of "Madame", but where she was exactly whatever, but I remember one posting that was I found very galling where she basically said, "well you're denied a Tourist Visa; not everybody gets to see Disney World. Sorry." And I remember sitting there thinking, you know who has a problem with that? Probably Disney World, who would kind of like folks to show up and shell out a couple of grand at their theme parks and stay there and spend money etc. I do get that there is a mentality in the mind of these Consular Officers where they do see a lot of fraudulent cases; they do see a lot of people who are lying to them, and you can get rather bitter and jaded but at the end of the day, I think it would be a good idea to really seriously reconsider section 214b or at least how it's applied and maybe start looking at the possibility and increasing the number of legal tourists into the United States if only to contribute to the internal economy.