The new $10 fee to be levied on visitors to the United States from 35 European and Asian visa-waiver countries (see previous Alliance coverage of the Travel Promotion Act) will cover a traveler for two years and could produce as much as $100-200 million a year to help fund a corporation to promote the United States as a tourist destination, the LA Times reports.

The Times also says that the Travel Promotion Act and the new tourism it produces will be a boon for the U.S. economy: for example, the initiative could “generate $650 million in tourist spending and create 6,500 jobs annually in California, according to [an] Oxford Economics study.”

Detractors of the act, however, argue that the fee may be counterproductive, as the ill-will it could create is not worth the revenue it generates:

We question the logic of the U.S. going out to travelers around the world and saying, ‘Please come visit the United States, but we're going to charge you more at the door,’ [Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association] said.