Requiem For Many Dreams

        "When I was a stranger you welcomed me," said Jesus.

​   "God doesn’t play favorites and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt,"  says the Torah.

      "Righteousness is... in one who believes in Allah...and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to the needy, the traveler,"  says the Qur'an.

    "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door,"  says the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.   

​"I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will make Mexico pay for that wall, mark my words," says Donald Trump.

     A few weeks ago there was an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Indian author Sandip Roy.  Twenty years ago Roy came to the United States to study engineering, lived here, thrived here. He savored  what he called "the possibility of reinvention" for a person living in this country, which is, to Sandip Roy and many millions across the globe,  what they think of as The American Dream.
      Or what they used to think of as The American Dream. 
    According to a New York Times op-ed piece by Mr. Roy,  Indians no longer dream of coming to America.  They see it as too dangerous.  Too violent.  And, since the ascendance of Donald Trump and his supporters, too unwelcoming to and suspicious of immigrants such as himself. 
      "Five years ago when I moved back to India," writes Roy, "nobody understood why I would do such a thing.  These days they nod understandingly."  He continues, "Growing up in India we didn't question the brain-drain of our best and brightest (and even our second-and third-bests) to America. It was the natural order of things.  President Trump's new vision for America is forcing us to reconsider that assumption."   
      Subsequently the desire to even visit America is on the wane among Indians.
     And not only among Indians.  Since Trump's election there's been a great drop in the number of foreign tourists expected to visit the United States this year.  Fred Dixon, chief executive of the travel agency NYC & Company, told the New York Times that, "Mr. Trump's statements and actions had changed the perceptions about the hospitality of of the United States just as prospective tourists are making vacation plans for 2017...the rhetoric out of Washington (is) really having an impact on travel."    According to Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, who also spoke to the Times, "The annual number of foreign visitors to the United States could fall by 6.3 million between 2016 and 2018 because of reactions to Mr. Trump's words and actions, such as pledges to pull out of international trade agreements."  Mr. Sacks also noted that "Online searches for airline tickets and hotels began dropping after the election.  They dipped again after Mr. Trump's election and fell further after he signed an executive order on the travel ban."
      Mr. Sacks added that it's going to be "a very challenging year" for those Americans who make their living in the U.S. travel industry.
      Does this information make you feel sad for our country? 
      (Sigh).  Me too.
     But it's not only brilliant minds and tourists who are losing their ardor for coming to The United States.  Even the number of illegal border crossings from Mexico has dropped since Donald Trump was elected.
     This graph was published last week in the New York Times:

        I expect that Donald Trump and his disciples,

...including that foul nematode Republican Congressman Steve "We Can't Restore Our Civilization With Somebody Else's Babies" King,

...must be feeling pretty exultant and self-congratulatory at this recent data.

      Apparently threats and hateful attitudes can keep people out of our country just as well as a wall.


References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/opinion/how-a-murder-in-kansas-looks-in-kolkata.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=world&_r=1&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Opinion&action=swipe&region=F

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/nyregion/new-york-foreign-tourists-trump-policies.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/trump-immigration-border.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/324406-rep-steve-king-claims-gop-colleagues-are-patting-me-on-the-back