A US passport used to be an asset. Under Trump it
has become a liability
Arwa
Mahdawi
The president has stopped pretending to do anything
about coronavirus. Travellers from the US are about to become the pariahs of
the world
Tue 26 May
2020 15.25 BSTLast modified on Tue 26 May 2020 19.35 BST
Donald
Trump’s favourite hobbies seem to consist of golf, Twitter and banning people
from the US. Alas, he may no longer have the opportunity to do as much of the
latter, because who would now want to come to the US anyway? The country is
doing such a bad job of containing coronavirus that you are better off almost
anywhere else. Indeed, last month, a number of American citizens in Lebanon
declined a repatriation offer, saying they were safer in Beirut.
It’s not
just a trip to the US that looks unappealing right now; it seems many countries
aren’t exactly salivating at the prospect of hosting American visitors in the
near future. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, for example, called
the border with the US a clear “vulnerability” for Canada in terms of
infections; the US-Canada border has been closed since March, and will remain
closed to nonessential travel until at least 21 June.
Meanwhile,
officials in Mexican border cities are reportedly tightening checks on visitors
from Texas, because they’re worried new coronavirus cases are coming from the
American side of the border. Which brings to mind a joke that is going around:
what borders on stupidity? Canada and Mexico.
An American
passport used to be an asset, now it’s looking rather more like a liability.
“Italy plans to reopen to travellers on June 3 –but not to Americans” ran a
recent headline in the travel magazine Afar. This is somewhat misleading: Italy
is opening its borders and removing quarantine restrictions only for people
from other countries in Europe, it is not singling out Americans. However,
Americans aren’t used to being told they can’t do things and a screenshot of
the article quickly went viral.
While Italy
might not have explicitly implemented an American ban (yet), it seems
increasingly likely that – as the Daily Beast put it – “American travellers are
about to be pariahs in this new world.” The travel industry is still figuring
out how to keep tourists safe, but it makes sense that countries doing a good
job of managing the pandemic will heavily restrict entry to travellers from
those doing a poor job. And the US is doing an extremely poor job.
Most
worryingly, it feels as if Trump has given up trying to pretend to do any sort
of job at all. The US neared the morbid milestone of 100,000 dead at the
weekend; Trump marked the occasion by going to play golf (without a mask) and
shaking people’s hands. When he wasn’t teeing off he was mouthing off: calling
Hillary Clinton a “skank” and ordering that states reopen places of worship. It
seems inevitable that Trump is going to do his best to open up the country way
before it is safe, just because he is worried about the economy and his chances
of re-election. Plus, Covid-19 is not exactly killing his base: it is
disproportionately killing African Americans. To paraphrase Kanye West’s
comments about George W Bush, I don’t really think Trump cares about black
people.
“The
coronavirus scenario I can’t stop thinking about is the one where we simply get
used to all the dying,” the New York Times columnist Charlie Warzel wrote
earlier this month. Just as America has grown resigned to school shootings and
preventable gun violence, he suggests, it looks as if it is becoming numb to
Covid-19 deaths. Just as the US has prioritised the rallying call of “freedom”
over common sense gun control, it looks set to prioritise “freedom” over public
health. Looking at images from the crowded pool parties in Missouri over the
weekend, looking at Trump’s calls for schools to reopen “ASAP”, it seems as if
that is exactly what’s happening. But here’s the thing the US might soon find
out about its highly individualistic freedom fetish: it doesn’t travel well.
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