While all other advanced countries have reported a steady and continuing increase in their incoming tourism over the past seven years, the United States has suffered a decline. Fewer foreign tourists are coming here today than arrived in the year 2000, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars of potential income and hundreds of thousands of potential tourism-related jobs.

So what is one branch of our government doing about that? Dismayed by the tourism deficit, Congress is about to pass the Travel Promotion Act establishing a mechanism to attract incoming visitors to the United States through increased marketing of our attractions.

And what is another branch of our government doing about the decline in incoming tourism? It is erecting still additional barriers discouraging foreign tourists from coming to the United States.

As astonishing as it may seem, the Department of Homeland Security has announced that starting January 12, 2009, people traveling to America -- even from countries whose citizens need not possess visas to visit us -- must apply for permission to come here three days in advance of arrival!

As reported by a British travel publication, TravelMole, the U.S. regulations will require “travelers to provide personal information including their name, date of birth and passport details, as well as travel information such as the flight number and destination address in the U.S. This is in addition to Advanced Passenger Information (API), which requires personal and travel details from the time of booking.”

All this will need to be e-mailed to the Department of Homeland Security three days in advance of travel. The reason? “The purpose . . . is to allow the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether an individual is eligible to enter the U.S. before they start their journey.”

So starting January 12, the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to review tens of thousands of applications each week. Did I say tens of thousands? In peak periods, perhaps hundreds of thousands of applications will need to be examined each week, to determine if the would-be tourist should be permitted in. Obviously, applications from people with Muslim names will be carefully scrutinized. But if a would-be terrorist obtains a passport under an Anglo-Saxon name, and e-mails a statement that he is planning to go sightseeing in Colonial Williamsburg, or Walt Disney World, how in the world will the new advance application prevent him from boarding a plane?

And how many thousands of employees will the Department of Homeland Security need to hire to review the thousands and thousands of applications each day? Indeed, has the Department of Homeland Security even hired any additional personnel for this purpose? Or is the entire procedure simply an empty fantasy?

All this points up the absurdity of actions taken by the current execs of the D.H.S. It parallels their contradictory, shifting, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t handling of last year’s proposed requirement that motorists crossing the Canadian border possess U.S. passports. In the same way that the latter tomfoolery eventually failed, this newest step is also bound to fail.

When we ultimately discover that multitudes of potential tourists will be angered by this latest barrier, that hundreds of thousands of foreigners will be unwilling to “apply for entrance” on the Internet three days in advance of arrival, then cooler heads will prevail and the requirement will be withdrawn. But why must we, in the meantime, suffer the damaging impact of this foolish edict?

Perhaps the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, soon to be appointed by President-elect Obama, will withdraw this harmful procedure. Perhaps we should all alert the incoming administration to a procedure for which not a single penny in additional appropriations for personnel has yet been sought.