Ridenour: More tourist access a risky idea

While the leaders of Brazil and China often take anti-U.S. positions on the world stage, Obama claimed the move would help the slumping travel industry by bringing millions of new free-spenders into the country without weakening national security.

Symbolically, the president made his announcement standing at the entrance to Fantasyland during the final stages of the Republican primary in Florida, a state where recent polls show him struggling badly after a narrow victory in 2008.

That program was temporarily suspended after the 9/11 attacks over concerns that many of the terrorists were able to enter the U.S. because of its weak provisions.

Yet recent actions by Brazil and China seem to undercut the president's campaign-driven nonchalance.

Brazil increasingly is undercutting U.S. interests by restricting the free flow of U.S. goods and services into its markets, while damaging Florida's citrus industry by sending huge amounts of orange juice into this country at cut-rate prices. Free trade, apparently, flows in one direction.

In recent years, its leftist governments have aligned themselves with Venezuela's anti-American dictator Hugo Chavez and Iran's crazed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. U.S. intelligence officials have issued recent warnings that Brazil is rapidly becoming a key base for al-Qaida and other Islamic jihadists in the Western Hemisphere. Brazil no longer considers Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist groups and disbanded its anti-terrorism force in 2009.

Given China's economic aggressiveness, it's difficult to see how allowing more Chinese visitors into this country would create any new American jobs. More likely it would result in the continuing exodus of well-paying manufacturing jobs to China.

Although the official unemployment rate has dipped below 9 percent, nearly 20 percent of Americans still are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work.

Adding a few low-paying baggage handlers and amusement park employees won't do much to lower those distressing numbers, but it did provide Obama with a beautiful photo opportunity in Fantasyland.