I think looking at international tourism is potentially misleading for the US. Many Americans vacation within the US, since it’s such a big country with a lot to see and do, without going international. So, while it’s true that it has relatively few international visitors, within-country tourism is pretty high.
Yeah, that’s the same for China. The US does still make a shit ton of money from the international visitors, though. More than 3 times what Spain gets from each international tourist, for example.
The importance of international tourism is twofold. First, it helps spread the country’s image (I think the relatively low number of international visitors to the US does not help its image). Second, and most importantly for Spain, it’s a net economic gain for the country, while internal tourism, while certainly helping the economy, is not as juicy as a net “free” income.
As a young American (well I was 25) visiting Europe in 1980 I missed a bombing at the Oktoberfest by one day, I saw police in Barcelona carrying machine guns and believe me the customs people in England weren’t fond of long haired unshaven Americans. I had to produce enough money to pay for an airline ticket home at the border.
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My son studied abroad at Edinburgh for a spell, and they still had a similar requirement; in this case, he had to produce the actual return ticket, AND show he had funds to handle living there without needing employment.
Yup we have dudes with machineguns at airports, but I’ve only seem em once (just after 9/11. It was PR, we even had light tanks at the airports once, just for silly politics reasons).
The difference is, the people with handguns at US immigration talk to me and ask me questions. I have NEVER interacted with anyone else armed in my life*
*except my instructor when I went clay pigeon shooting.
Absolutely! But the statistic that is being bounced around in this thread is a very specific and somewhat odd one - international long-haul arrivals by region.
The vast majority of those international visits to Spain are from within Europe, and hence not in those long-haul numbers cited earlier. Spain doesn’t even crack the top ten travel destinations for that particular stat.
Whereas about half of the US’s international visitors are from outside its region.
So for this particular statistic, Spain’s base is much smaller than the US’s, and hence able to see a larger percentage jump.
You need to travel more (or not). I see armed guards at customs/immigration stations all over the world, including much of Eastern Europe.
Definitely the case when I was in France and Italy in 2015. Less noticeable at Germany, but definitely in Amsterdam as well.
They stood out.
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I traveled in Europe a lot in the late 60s through mid seventies, when various factions and splinter groups in Europe were still occasionally blowing things up. The airport guards were heavily armed even then. I really don’t even notice it now.
Interesting. While certainly airport guards are heavily armed (and part of my family is Basque, so I’m used to heavily guarded road controls too, specially in the 90s) when I lived on New York I certainly saw more weapons on the street regurarly than around here (Madrid). Then I worked in Mexico and was immunized.
It might be just some weird bias, I admit, but my subjective perception is that you saw a lot more weapons in the US.
Certainly I think there is more than a bit of that, coming from both sides.
In the US a police officer with a sidearm goes unnoticed. In fact an officer without one would almost stand out. But any security with fully automatic weapons seems bizarre.
Yet walking by the gendarmerie near Point Neuf in Paris, there were 3-4 officers with fully automatic weapons. And nearby any major attraction it was usually pretty easy to find some. Same across Europe in my experience. And this was in 2015, not with some recent event to cause it.
So it’s a bit of mutual cultural blindness. We each see our own state as normal, but our counterparts as unusual.
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About your “waiting several days for the results” concern: not an issue in Oregon because the ballots have to be in election officials’ hands by 8 PM on election night per Oregon law. Now Washington State goes by postmark, which is goofy IMHO.
I’m surprised that Oregon is allowed to enforce that, since the dates of federal election are set at the federal level. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing Oregon results not being available on election night.
You don’t have to mail it. You can drop it off at the ballot box on election day. They’re available on election night, very late sometimes and a couple of really close calls maybe not until the next day. I don’t think there is any federal election law that says you have to take mailed ballots past the election day. These are not absentee.
They often call the national results before we’re even done.
We have had a few instances where because of mail in ballots results of local races often were not known for a couple days. I don’t remember it ever effecting any state or federal position.
This is in California.
I do believe here that the election office is open for voting something like a week before the actual election day.
Heh. Yeah, I have visited France and Italy in the last two years and I’ve seen police, whatever version of national guard they have, and soldiers all heavily armed on guard duty. I am no fan of the gun climate in the U.S. but Europe seems on a higher alert than the U.S.
Well, it is the final countdown over there.