President Obama's Japan Trip Hotel Bill: $635K

    President Obama spent only one night in Japan last week on his current swing through the Far East, but the State Department estimated total "lodging nights" required by the president and his entourage could run around 2,172, and the use of "functional rooms" (presumably conference rooms and the like) could last up to 29 days.  The total cost was estimated at a maximum of $635,261.92:

    The cost of lodging is not what makes this contract posting notable or unique, however (the cost of a recent presidential trip to Brussels came to about $1.5 million for just one of the hotels used for the visit); rather, the speed with which this contract was posted online makes it stand out.  The time from the president's departure from Japan to the posting of the contract was barely three days. Such contracts can sometimes take months to appear on fbo.gov, the federal government's contracting website.
    The visit was so recent, in fact, that as of Monday morning, the hotel where the president and his team stayed (Hotel Okura Tokyo) still had a message posted on its website thanking other guests for their patience with the inconveniences caused by the "foreign delegations's stay."

    Although the Justification and Approval document pictured above refers to a "Vice President visit," the State Department confirmed via email that the document pictured above was indeed for the president's recent visit.  The State Department said the reference to the Vice President was a typo left over from a prior document, but was corrected in the final contract.  The last time Vice President Biden visited Japan was in December 2013.  The estimated cost of lodging for that visit was $420,000.


Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Kerry: Guns in U.S. "Scare" Foreign Students, Yet They Keep Coming

   In an interview broadcast on CNN Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that one of the reasons foreign students are increasingly avoiding the United States is the fear of gun violence:

We had an interesting discussion about why fewer students are coming to, particularly from Japan, to study in the United States, and one of the responses I got from our officials from conversations with parents here is that they're actually scared. They think they're not safe in the United States and so they don't come.

    CNN adds:

[Kerry] noted Japan's restrictive gun laws – which prevent private ownership of nearly all firearms, including handguns – and said the country was safer "where people are not running around with guns." 

    CNN also noted an Institute of International Education (IIE) report enumerating the decline in students from Japan coming to the United States: 

In 2011, Japan sent 21,290 students to study in the United States, making it the seventh largest country of origin for international scholars. That was down 14% from the previous year, according to numbers from the Institute of International Education. 

Figures have shown international study is down markedly among Japanese students to all destinations, including the United States. Experts have attributed the decline to Japan's low birthrate, the expense of foreign study in a poor economy, and a desire among Japanese young people to remain at home rather than venture to other countries.

    What neither Kerry nor CNN noted, however, were the other statistics reported by the IIE (via Bloomberg):

The total number of international students in the U.S. climbed 4.7 percent in the 2010-2011 academic year to 723,277, with the fastest growth coming from China [23 percent increase to 157,558] and Saudi Arabia, which sent 22,704 students, a 44 percent increase.

    The increase from China is a stark contrast to Japan's decrease.  Both Asian countries have restrictive gun laws, yet students in China do not seem to harbor the same anxieties about gun violence that Kerry attributes to those in Japan.

    An even broader measure of foreigners attitudes, the Japanese in particular, towards travel to and residence in the United States can be gleaned from a July 2012 report issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [emphasis added]:

During 2011, there were 159 million nonimmigrant admissions to the United States according to DHS work-load estimates. These admissions included tourists and business travelers from Canada, Mexican nationals with Border Crossing Cards, and I-94 admissions.  I-94 admissions accounted for 33 percent (53.1 million) of the total admissions (see Figure 1). The majority (87 percent) of I-94 admissions were temporary visitors for business and pleasure, while 6.4 percent were temporary workers and families and 3.4 percent were students. The leading countries of citizenship for I-94 admissions were Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

    Although the DHS report says that some of the increase can be attributed to the way entries and re-entries by the same individual are counted, by almost any measure in this DHS report, visitors to the United States are on the rise.  Secretary Kerry's remarks on gun violence come at a time the Obama administration and its supporters are increasing pressure on Congress to pass gun control legislation.  A more comprehensive look at the facts behind Kerry's remarks does not bolster the administration's case as well as the secretary may have intended.

Note: I had this post ready to publish last night, but Glenn Kestler, Fact Checker Extraordinaire at the Washington Post, beat me to it this morning.