Last US election cycle, Trump promised a border wall. It's something his supporters appeared to be obsessed with, and I suspect it played a key role in his election. Trump's popularity was just a more extreme version of the xenophobia sweeping the western world at the time. (See also: Brexit.) At the time, the fear wasn't spread of disease, (though there was some of that in the prior ebola scare) but fear of immigrants "taking their jobs."
And yet, it's considered more okay to travel internationally for tourist purposes than for work purposes.
Until now.
I'm guessing you've heard, but multiple first-world countries are now restricting entry to either citizens, residents, or people with a work permit.
I'm kind of left wondering... why was travel for tourism purposes ever considered better than travel for work purposes in the first place?
The first possible reason is the notion that a country's own citizens should have first dibs on the available jobs, and an employer shouldn't be looking to foreigners to fill the gaps. Firstly, this flies in the face of the "no one owes you a job" mantra Americans invoke in every other context. Secondly... aren't tourists who purchase goods and services in the host country consuming natural resources that would otherwise go to its citizens? Why is that considered more acceptable? Sure, they're paying for the goods and services... just as foreign workers are paid for their labour. So why is that still considered so different?
Shouldn't it have been the other way around in the first place?
I sometimes wonder if the real reason is not practical, but emotional. It is more emotionally flattering, (generally speaking; depends on the circumstances) to see someone interested in your hometown than to see someone show up to accept a job that was denied to you or taken from you. But isn't that more something to take up with that employer? Or the customers to whom they were catering?
I think what this crisis shows is that one country shutting its borders is not enough. Someone could easily circumvent restrictions on going from country A to B by going to country B through country C. But if in future pandemics, if every country but A co-operated on cutting off travel from "country A," they could more effectively contain pandemic spread.
But international co-ordination relies on better international relations. And that, in turn, relies on a more inter-connected world. I would think the authenticity of overseas jobs would be a better way to create a more inter-connected world than inauthentic tourist traps could ever be.
