Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JumpCrisscross 106 days ago
This sounds like someone who is on social media too much. The counterpart is an American in Paris convinced the banlieu are war zones.

The actual problems: we’ve made it impossible and insulting to get a tourist visa. And we’ve made pissing on our tourism partners our foreign policy.
2 comments
s_dev 106 days ago
>The counterpart is an American in Paris convinced the banlieu are war zones.

This isn't a counterpart because nobody is trying to explain a significant drop in tourism numbers to Paris.

link
_Tev 105 days ago
> This isn't a counterpart because nobody is trying to explain a significant drop in tourism numbers to Paris.

Actually there isn't much to explain. Every single person I know that has been to Paris has been disappointed by it and complained how there are way too many people everywhere. Maybe there were just too many tourists in Paris?

link
blurbleblurble 106 days ago
Your head's in the sand. Where I live we have bounty hunters kidnapping people into unmarked vans. For six months or more now. Would visitors likely be safe? Sure, but not necessarily and I can't blame people for being cautious and there's so much unpredictability around it, even for those of us who are familiar.
link
JumpCrisscross 106 days ago
> I can't blame people for being cautious and there's so much unpredictability around it

I can. Again, this is like refusing to visit CDMX because you heard about gang violence or avoiding Sicily because there is crime. Those singular events aren’t false. But they don’t make up the majority of the context. Someone refusing to travel because of these low-probability events (note: because of fear of them, not out of protest, which is separate) is almost certainly behaving irrationally.

link
JumpCrisscross 106 days ago
> I can't blame people for being cautious and there's so much unpredictability around it

I can. Again, this is like refusing to visit CDMX because you heard about gang violence or avoiding Sicily because there is crime. Those singular events aren’t false. But they don’t make up the majority of the context. Someone refusing to travel because of these low-probability events (note: because of fear of them, not out of protest, which is separate) is almost certainly behaving irrationally.

Where your argument might have purchase is in America having previously been a good tourism destination for someone with such anxieties. But the truth of the matter is folks like that don’t tend to travel in the first place.

link
blurbleblurble 106 days ago
It really isn't like that though. On top of the rogue paramilitaries with arrest quotas for getting their menial bonuses, there are multiple cases now where _tourists_ have been detained for weeks or more, even those with valid visas, arbitrarily. Multiple governments are cautioning people around travel to the US, and people from many countries are being outright banned from entering. Look at this map: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12631. Travel is already stressful enough without a rogue xenophobic force at the helm.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-travel-detentions-1.7489525

link
smartbit 106 days ago
Guardian article https://archive.ph/lDwTA
link
BeetleB 106 days ago
> But they don’t make up the majority of the context. Someone refusing to travel because of these low-probability events (note: because of fear of them, not out of protest, which is separate) is almost certainly behaving irrationally.

Statistically speaking, it's very safe for a white American to go to Dubai/Doha these days.

Would you fault them for not going?

link
blurbleblurble 106 days ago
Why should anyone who isn't a citizen feel safe travelling to the US right now when this is how the federal administration brazenly treats people who are citizens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSbRBCyG72g
link