{"id":200753,"date":"2026-03-02T17:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/200753\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:07:08","slug":"trumps-deportation-crackdown-is-hurting-tourism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/200753\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s deportation crackdown is hurting tourism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article<\/a> was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.<\/p>\n

At the Universal Studios\u00a0Hollywood theme park near Los Angeles, food service worker Sam Nassar doesn\u2019t need a corporate earnings call to know that tourism is down, including among international visitors. He can see it inside the park \u2014 and in his schedule and paycheck.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the start of last year, we\u2019ve definitely seen a huge dip in attendance,\u201d said Nassar, 39, who works primarily at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter area of the park. \u201cMy hours have been cut anywhere from 30% to 50%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nassar has used a second job as an in-home caregiver to make ends meet, but he wonders about the year to come. And while a downturn in a theme park can be attributable to any number of factors, the decline of international visitors, he said, is noticeable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if they\u2019re afraid to come (to the United States) or if it\u2019s a financial situation, but we\u2019ve definitely felt it,\u201d Nassar said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to know what we as a country look like to the rest of the world right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on immigrants living in the U.S. is having a chilling effect on people traveling here from outside the country. International travel to the U.S. has had\u00a0nine straight months of decline<\/a>\u00a0in foreign visitors versus the year before.<\/p>\n

At a time when global tourism is growing, the U.S. experienced a 6% decrease in foreign visitors in 2025 and was the\u00a0only country<\/a>\u00a0to see international visitor spending fall off \u2014 a staggering $12.5 billion projected downturn in revenue. California wasn\u2019t spared; after enjoying a 10% increase in 2024, its international visitor count declined in 2025.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant policies appear to be making it less likely that people from other countries visit here or leave their tourism dollars in the States. That will affect both large corporations and their individual workers, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can see the moral and ethical reprehensibility of what is going on, and that is the first concern,\u201d said Shierholz, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. \u201cBut it is also just terrible economics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last summer, the\u00a0Economic Policy Institute estimated that Trump\u2019s plan to deport as many as a million immigrants per year during his term would lead not only to 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants over four years, but also to 2.6 million fewer employed U.S.-born workers \u2014 the ripple effect of a damaged job market.<\/p>\n

That is one of two primary ways that Trump\u2019s policies are hammering California, one of many states that rely on immigrant workers to fill a huge portion of service-related jobs in the state. <\/p>\n

The other is more straightforward: a decline in tourism, which produces about $157 billion in visitor spending each year.<\/p>\n

The travel industry organization Visit California\u00a0projected<\/a>\u00a0in October that international visits to the Golden State would drop by less than a percent for the whole of 2025. But two months later, foreign travel for December\u00a0dropped by 7.2%<\/a>\u00a0compared to 2024. Canadians\u2019 continued repudiation of Trump, combined with discomfort over his immigration and border policies, led to a nearly 20% decline in visitors from that country alone.<\/p>\n

Where does such a dropoff show up? Fewer hotel stays, fewer theme park visits, less restaurant and retail revenue \u2014 all of the categories normally pumped up by tourists, including those from other countries.<\/p>\n

A recently released national\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0brings the topic into focus. The administration\u2019s anti-immigrant policies, the union Unite Here contends in the report, \u201care making the U.S. inhospitable \u2014 putting our nation\u2019s spot as the No. 1 global tourism economy in jeopardy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unite Here represents about 300,000 workers nationally, more than 32,000 of them in California and Arizona, mostly in hospitality-related jobs in hotels, casinos, airports and food service companies. (Disclosure: The union is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.) Its report found that hotel revenue in the U.S. is almost flat, growing at its slowest rate ever apart from the pandemic and select recessionary periods.<\/p>\n

The report focused on tourism-heavy locales like Miami, where the stripping of work authorization for many employees has left remaining workers to take on extra responsibilities and employers to dole out increasing amounts of overtime despite a decline in international visitors. It also cited federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that nationally, there were 98,000 fewer people employed in leisure and hospitality jobs in December 2025 versus one year before.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the board, the U.S. hospitality industry is suffering because of Trump\u2019s immigration policies and ongoing political vitriol,\u201d the authors of the report wrote. \u201cThese have upended the industry on multiple fronts, resulting in fewer visitors, fewer available workers, and a hotel industry in which only luxury properties can thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s raids\u00a0on immigrants have led to a deep sense of unrest among potential international visitors, including for the highest-profile events. The FIFA World Cup, the most prestigious soccer tournament on the globe, is set for this summer in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But some officials of the sport have loudly debated whether to recommend that people \u2014 or even teams \u2014 come to the States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is clearly time to at least discuss a boycott,\u201d Oke Goettlich, a member of the German Football Association\u2019s executive board, told the sports site The Athletic in January. \u201cWe do not know yet how the coming months will unfold. Right now, Germany\u2019s Foreign Office has issued travel advisories for parts of the United States. We are seeing people\u00a0die on the streets as a result of actions by immigration enforcement<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Cup is just one example of the potential for Trump\u2019s policies to decimate economic plans, but it\u2019s a big one. California is a significant stakeholder in the World Cup, with 14 matches scheduled to be played in the state. The tournament by definition is a major international draw.<\/p>\n

Estimates in 2024 suggested the state might reap a $1.2 billion financial windfall from the tournament, split roughly in half between Northern California and Southern California. But those estimates\u00a0assumed<\/a>\u00a0a huge influx of international visitors \u2014 the exact people who\u2019ve been coming in smaller numbers over the past year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too soon to know how that will play out. But on the subject of Trump\u2019s immigration policies, two things already seem clear: The raids are weakening the employment pool, especially in U.S. service industries; and tourism is taking a hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing through 2024, even 2023, we felt like things were finally picking up from the pandemic and were kind of going back to normal a little bit,\u201d said Nassar, the Universal theme park worker. \u201cBut this past year has been another huge dip downward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Capital & Main<\/a> is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.\u200b<\/p>\n

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