You know an economy is hollowed out when it starts throwing money at tourism. Here in Massachusetts, we used to make things: shoes, cameras, military components, even desk-size devices called minicomputers. Now our big economic play is luring Eurotrash to Newbury Street or duping outlanders into walking the various Women's Heritage Trails on Beacon Hill and elsewhere.
This is how it works in the Third World: If you can't make it as a country, you can always make it as a theme park. Preferably with some "eco" or "green" spin to salve the consciences of the guilt-tripping suburbanites.
Welcome to next generation America. Various entities, including the Disney resorts and the nation's leading hotel chains, are lobbying Congress to pass the Travel Promotion Act, which hopes to inject $200 million into America's limp-to-nonexistent overseas tourism development program.
They're not asking for taxpayers' money. Instead, they want to add a $10 surcharge to tourists' visa applications, matching those revenues with private industry investments. Cape Cod's congressman, William Delahunt, and others tried to get this bill passed last year and failed. Will this be the lucky year for what I am calling the Theme Park America Act? Stay tuned.
Leaving my nativist impulses aside - I'm tired of giving Japanese visitors directions to the Louisa May Alcott house - who wants more foreigners cluttering our sidewalks and highways? Lots of people. The dropoff in overseas tourism since Sept. 11 has cost the country $140 billion in lost visitor spending and $23 billion in lost tax revenue, according to the Travel Industry Association. "This is absolutely critical to our economy," says TIA prexy Roger Dow, a tireless pitchman for his industry. "There is all this new money flowing into international tourism, and we're not getting it."
Dow offers up a case study: One million Brazilians used to visit the United States annually, pre-9/11. In the past decade, overseas travel has exploded in Brazil, but only 500,000 of those travelers come here. "These folks are going all over the world, and they are huge spenders," Dow says, "but they're skipping the US."
Why? For one thing, it's hard to get a US visa. In some countries, would-be travelers have to wait a hundred days just to get an appointment to apply for a visa. Second, "there is a very negative perception of how people are treated when they come through customs and border protection," Dow says. "We did a survey that showed 50 percent of people feared going through US Customs. That's a bad situation."
On this issue, Dow says, "the international media beats us like a drum." Last year, London's Sunday Times printed a massive article headlined "Travel to America? No Thanks." "Michael Chertoff, baldie boss of the Department of Homeland Securitisation [sic], has now reminded us that we're not wanted," wrote the Times's Matt Rudd, clearly guilty of having too much fun in print. For every major US tourist attraction, Rudd proposed a non-American alternative: e.g., Macau for Las Vegas, Italy's Amalfi Drive for California's Highway 1, etc.
The Times followed up his story this March: "US Visa Complications Continue." Wow; you can't buy bad publicity like this. Why would I want to visit a country like the US that culls "biometric" data before and after you arrive at the airport? "The 'Fortress America' phenomenon has played a very negative role in getting visitors here," a local travel official told me.
For obvious reasons, no one wants to be quoted disparaging the Department of Homeland Security. Three separate DHS spokespeople failed to convince me that international travel procedures were improving here. In fact, starting next week, you will need more documentation to visit our friendly northern neighbor, Canada.
Will Obama loosen up the borders, if only to let his millions of foreign worshipers in? If they make it to Honolulu, they can take Gray Line's $37 President Obama Tour, of "key historical locations" that shaped the president's life. His apartment complex, private school, favorite surfing hangout, and so on.
Maybe we can add Los Angeles, New York, and Cambridge, where the president was educated, and Chicago, where he made his political bones, into the tour. We'll turn the country into an Obama theme park. I've heard worse ideas.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
