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A Dutch friend responded to an invitation to visit Utah recently with an interesting reply:

"Traveling through the USA is not very easy for us anymore," she wrote. "The U.S. government wants to know everything. Who you are. Who you will meet (and how did you meet these Americans and are you sure they are not criminals!). Where you will stay (this is the biggest problem. I'd like to backpack and go with the flow. Impossible in the USA for us at the moment). And when you will leave. I am not a terrorist."

The response shocked me. I had no idea.

Then I received another recent release from the Discover America Partnership revealing how difficult it has become for foreigners to travel in the U.S.

In a Jan. 22 article in The Sunday Times of Great Britain, author Michael Rudd wrote:

"Traveling to the U.S. offers experiences like nowhere else on Earth. Nowhere else can a visitor expect such a spirit-crushingly frosty reception. A preflight interrogation, epic queues at immigration, thin-lipped questioning from aggressive border guards, and an outside chance of a rubber-gloved rectal rummage are all part of the fun. So if Chertoff and company want to tighten Fortress America further, it's time we considered other more welcoming holiday options. Such as Iran or North Korea."

According to the Discover America Partnership, travel to the U.S. by foreigners is down 17 percent since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, costing the country $94 billion in visitor spending, $16 billion in tax receipts and nearly 200,000 American jobs. While the global travel market has expanded, the U.S. market is shrinking, a fact that hurts a place such as Utah that relies on European visitors.

Discover America Partnership also notes that foreign travelers no longer feel welcome here. Many call our entry process the world's worst.

Sure, it's important to secure our borders and make certain terrorists of the type that blew up the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 don't slip through. But how difficult should it be to come up with a better process?

Discover America Partnership offers some excellent ideas.

It suggests using new technology to speed up the process of obtaining a visa to visit the U.S., guaranteeing at least a 30-day turnaround. The group wants to modernize and secure ports of entry into the U.S., especially at airports, where visitors are processed in 30 minutes or less using new technologies to enhance security while creating more user-friendly experiences.

As a traveler to nearly 40 countries in my life, I've had few bad customs experiences.

If we can be treated with courtesy around the world, why can't Americans come up with a system more welcoming to our foreign friends?

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* TOM WHARTON can be contacted at wharton@sltrib.com. His phone number is 801-257-8909. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com.