The Awesome Barrier of a $140 Per Person Fee to Visit the U.S.A. Does More to Discourage Tourism Here Than Any Lack of Visit U.S.A. Advertising

Several newspapers carried recent articles about the wholly commendable plans of Brand America (the new tourism-encouraging organization for visits to the U.S.) to spend tens of millions of dollars on overseas advertising for such attractions as the Grand Canyon. This, apparently, will cause foreigners to consider vacations in the United States.
 
I'd suggest that lack of advertising isn't the reason why the U.S. is lagging so far behind in visits by overseas citizens; those people overseas know about our attractions, and would normally be expected to come here in large numbers. A fraction of the proposed expenditure spent on contacting members of Congress and persuading them to enact legislation that would reduce our visa barriers to overseas residents, would do far more to increase our tourism numbers.
 
A friend who recently flew to Buenos Aires points out that when you approach the immigration and customs booths at the airport there, you see a sign directed to American visitors -- a sign in English -- reminding them that the fee to visit Argentina is $140 per person. That's in angry retaliation for the $140 that we charge Argentinians to visit the U.S.A. The same $140 per person is charged to citizens of Brazil, and a great many other countries, and does more to discourage incoming tourism here than any lack of advertising. It's an example of how the desire of one government agency (the State Department) to recoup its costs, can totally nullify the efforts of other government agencies (the Commerce Department, for instance) to increase our tourism figures, thus creating additional billions of dollars of income and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
 
The links between the two -- visa barriers to foreign visitors and the overly-slow growth of tourism to the U.S. -- is so plain that those links, rather than an advertising solution, should be the predominant concern of Brand America.