Westneat: Cold war chills hot Seattle tradition

But the climate around a much smaller international event, scheduled for Seattle in less than a month, suggests she has a point.

The annual “northern invasion,” coming up May 9-11, has become the talk of the local tourism industry. It’s the weekend when Canada’s only Major League Baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays, plays the Seattle Mariners. This typically draws 20,000 or more Canadian fans south to take over T-Mobile Park.

One Mariners’ fan site dubbed it the “poutine-and-maple-syrup-stained War of Northern Aggression.” It’s a tradition, in which Canadians boisterously outnumber local fans, converting the games into a home series for them.

Some years, the stadium is 90 percent full for all three games. This year, hotels report that Canadian tour packages for the weekend are down 50 percent.

Last month, a Toronto sports tour company said it had canceled five of eight baseball trips to the states. “Since Trump has taken office, the feedback in terms of inquiries and bookings have been abysmal,” the tour CEO said.

Visit Seattle, a local tourism group, says a single hotel in the city has had 1,200 room nights in cancellations to Canadians through May. (This includes more than just Blue Jays weekend.)

For Clipper Vacations, which runs 525-seat boats between Victoria, British Columbia, and Seattle, the Blue Jays weekend traditionally is so big the company runs extra boats.

“Both our bookings and our hotel packages are down 30 percent for that weekend,” Mark Collins, the Clipper CEO, told me.

I asked if the lack of demand was due to a boycott of America. He said the main reason is shifting.

“We’re getting a lot more concern now about detention and border rules,” he said. “Enough foreign travelers have been getting stopped or put in detention that there’s some fear now about making the trip.”

In fact last week Canada issued a travel advisory, warning Canadians to expect extra scrutiny from U.S. border guards and that they could be detained if denied entry.

Germany, the U.K. and a half-dozen other countries have put out travel advisories on the U.S. None say “don’t go,” of course, but rather “be extra careful” or you could get locked up. Plus, the reasons have been getting creepier. France protested recently when a French scientist headed to a U.S. conference was expelled after screening agents searched his phone and found comments critical of Trump administration policies.

Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made things more Orwellian by releasing a promotional graphic that read “if it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it’s our job to stop it.” The categories of things they want to stop: “People, money, products, ideas.”

That last one is full-on thought-police territory. Whatever they meant by it — ICE has since deleted the tweet — it’s hardly welcoming to folks just hoping to catch a few ballgames.

The bad news is that the Trump administration’s belligerence to the world appears to be escalating.

The good news is that the big show — the U.S. hosting the World Cup — isn’t for another year. But given all of the above, it doesn’t seem too soon to start worrying whether the world is going to feel welcome for it.