Is America Really Open for Business?

One day after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend virtually every provision of the Patriot Act, three industry organizations were "applauding" Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for saying he wants to ensure that "those who wish to visit, study and conduct business in the United States" can do so.

In their joint release, the American Society of Assn. Executives, Meeting Professionals Intl. and the Professional Convention Management Assn. failed to note that nothing in the legislation approved (and at press time headed for enactment) did anything to solve the problems of foreign tradeshow exhibitors and attendees trying their best to conduct business in the United States.

The groups have gone so far as to send Chertoff a letter thanking him for "the efforts that you and your department are undertaking to make our country safer, without impeding the ability of foreign travelers to come in and out of the United States efficiently."

Meanwhile, tradeshows of all sizes with decades-long traditions of active foreign participation have been devastated. The disappearance of exhibitors and attendees from the showfloors is not the result of the legitimate ebb and flow of a free enterprise system, but of draconian measures that make it more and more difficult for legitimate business people to enter the United States.

In attempting to mount any kind of defense of their members' interest, industry organizations seem to bend over backwards to acknowledge, as these organizations did in their letter to Chertoff, that they are as interested in national security as anybody, apparently hoping not to antagonize a public that becomes more xenophobic every day.

As a result of these chary efforts to avoid resentment, matters only get worse. Deadlines for machine-readable passports have been pushed back for visitors from countries participating in the visa-waiver program, but they are still coming. By 2007, visitors from Mexico and Canada, two of the United States' most active trading partners, will be required to carry passports. Never mind that visitors not living in one of the 27 visa-waiver countries already have a difficult time gaining access to this country.

Is the fact that anybody in the federal government has failed to take action on these issues really what these industry organizations mean when they say they are happy Chertoff is not "impeding the ability of foreign travelers to come in and out of the United States efficiently?"

One organization that did not sign on to this joint communiqué is the one that the largest portion of our readers probably belong to: the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management.

I hope the omission is intentional. I hope that's because IAEM is too busy advocating on behalf of its members in Washington, D.C., on these issues, too busy creating relationships with the international tradeshow community by way of its education programs in, for instance, China and Mexico, and its offices overseas (including the opening of a new one in Singapore).

I hope that even at this moment somebody at IAEM is writing a more strongly worded letter to Chertoff that will help him and others in the U.S. government understand that for centuries the spirit of democracy has moved across the globe in concert with the forces of free trade, that national security is enhanced — not diminished — when honest, legitimate business people can move freely from one country to the next.