A Tale of Two Tourists

The twisted logic of tourist visas

A few years ago, I saw hundreds of people lining up outside the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala.

“What’s going on?,” I asked my Guatemalan friend.

“Oh, they’re trying to get tourist visas,” he explained.

Which is striking, because getting a U.S. tourist visa is practically impossible for the typical Guatemalan. Why? Simple: Guatemala is definitely not on the short list of countries with visa-free travel to the U.S. So under U.S. law, Guatemalans must proverbially “prove a negative” just to take a vacation here.

Let’s back up. In legalese, the U.S. starts with a “presumption of immigrant intent.” In plain English, they assume that every so-called “tourist” is an illegal immigrant in disguise. To get a tourist visa, you have to convince the U.S. government that this assumption is, in your particular case, incorrect. As the State Department explains, the applicant must:

sufficiently demonstrat[e] that you have strong ties to your home country that will compel you to leave the United States at the end of your temporary stay.

Unfortunately, if you’re an unskilled Guatemalan, it is almost impossible to “sufficiently demonstrate” this. Who cares if you’ve got a career, home, and family in Guatemala? Any unskilled job in the U.S. would normally still be a big step up for you. And don’t you want your family to have a better life? So tough luck, Guatemalteco: You’re never going to see Disneyland.

Tokyo Disneyland

Strangely, however, Guatemalans are free to visit Tokyo Disneyland with an ordinary passport! The same goes for Mexicans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, and even Hondurans. Despite its anti-immigrant reputation, Japan’s visa-free travel list is almost twice as long as America’s — and includes some desperately poor countries. Per-capita GDP in Honduras is about $2800 — roughly half of Guatemala’s. Yet Hondurans are still welcome to visit the Land of the Rising Sun.

Why is the Japanese government so much more hospitable to the global poor than the US? The reason is definitely not that the Japanese are more economically literate. Like Americans, the Japanese are plainly horrified by the idea of people moving from countries where their productivity is low to countries where their productivity is high. Indeed, they’re probably even more horrified.

So what gives? On reflection, the explanation is straightforward. In Japan, illegal Guatemalan workers would stick out like a sore thumb. There’s no Spanish-speaking subculture to join, much less a Guatemalan sub-subculture. So they’d have to find a black market job all on their own. Without speaking Japanese. And somehow avoid detection in a famously law-abiding country. The idea that Guatemalan tourists are plotting to remain in Japan indefinitely is therefore truly paranoid. Even the hyper-cautious Japanese accept that, so they welcome the people of Guatemala with a smile.

In the U.S., in contrast, illegal Guatemalan workers blend right in. They don’t have to learn a new language, and they can sleep on their cousin’s couch until their other cousin finds them a job. Once you accept the delusion that honest labor is a crime, looking on every Guatemalan tourist with extreme suspicion makes perfect sense. Once they’re in, why wouldn’t they stay indefinitely?!

If you were Guatemalan, wouldn’t you?