Photo Credit: Kevin Lamarque, Reuters
You have to have been living under a rock to not hear about President Donald Trump’s fight against our neighbors to the north, Canada. Between threatening tariffs to repeatedly suggesting that America should annex Canada as the “51st state”, it has singlehandedly caused a significant fissure in what has traditionally been a very strong relationship.
While it is easy to think that considering our geographic distance from Canada that Arizona would be ringfenced from these issues, that is simply not the case. These actions have sparked a very significant anti-United States, pro-Canada movement that will have ripple effects in our neck of the woods.
Arizona has over 100,000 visitors from Canada annually, and many of them have winter homes in the area to escape from the Canadian winters. These “snowbirds” are estimated to pump $1.4 billion into the state economy each year.
A new rule from the Trump administration mandates that any Canadians who visit for more than 30 days are required to give fingerprints to our immigration offices. While on its surface it may not seem like a massive imposition, it could very easily be an “insult to injury” moment that tips the balance for many snowbirds, causing them to sell their winter homes.
More than the annual snowbirds, there is the case of shorter-term tourists. Flight bookings from Canada to the United States have plunged a startling 70%, with a drop of over one million bookings from the same time last year. Considering that a good number of those visitors would have been looking to beat the winter cold in Arizona, or perhaps making a pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon, the economic loss to us specifically won’t be directly measurable but would almost certainly be significant.
Anyone who has observed this President for any amount of time knows that his dictates are often fluid and subject to being rescinded when the mood suits him. That is the hope of the Canadian Snowbird Association, which “is actively working with members of Congress and the Trump administration to rescind this requirement for Canadian citizens,” it said in a recent news release. For the sake of our state we should hope that they will come to a better agreement, because Arizona stands to be more heavily impacted than most states.