[ OUR OPINION ]

Don’t torment low-risk
foreign tourists

THE ISSUE The State Department is planning to initiate additional security measures to prevent terrorists from entering the United States.

HAWAII'S tourism industry has had difficulty luring South Koreans to visit the islands in recent years and is about to be handed more aggravation. Beginning next month, nearly all South Koreans wishing to visit the United States will be required to undergo interviews at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul before being granted visas. That and other security measures to be initiated in the coming months threaten to further complicate the travel industry's struggle to recover from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The industry also could be damaged by a requirement, starting in October, that tourists from all countries, including those whose citizens don't need visas to visit the United States, have computer-readable passports, including fingerprints and photographs. Japanese and British visitors already carry such passports, but tourists from a number of countries, including France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, do not.

The Travel Industry Association of America is concerned that a shortage of equipment and personnel to cope with the changes will lead to confusion and annoyance of potential visitors, causing them to visit other countries or stay at home. The State Department should not embark on such a program until it can adequately handle it, and an exception to the planned increase in visa interviews should be made for South Korea.

Hawaii tourism executives and public officials have tried for years to have the requirement that Koreans obtain visas eliminated. However, under the U.S. visa waiver program, visas are required of visitors from any country where at least 2 percent of visa applications are refused. In Korea, the rejection rate was 6 percent in the late 1990s when Hawaii officials last tried to have the requirement dropped for that country.

In 2001, Hawaii was visited by only 44,141 Koreans, less than 1 percent of the 6.3 million visitors to the islands in that year and little more than one-third of the number of Koreans who came to Hawaii in 1996. According to the Travel Industry Association, 27 percent of the South Korean visa applications are typically interviewed at the Embassy. If that figure rises to 90 percent, as expected, the association believes diplomats will be able to process 200,000 visas a year, down from 500,000.

"We strongly support secure borders," William S. Norman, president of the travel association, said this week at a news conference. "However, we also need government policies that facilitate the visitation of legitimate low-risk international visitors to the United States. We want a balance between homeland security and the economy. The government is trying to do too much with too little."