How to kickstart the US economy

There are so many layoffs, so much bad news in the worst crisis we may have ever faced. Everything that the economy needs is just not there. If we stop for a moment and think.. yes, sometimes, we are so busy that we really don't think. There may be a way to help revive the economy!

We've lost the manufacturing edge, we lost the services to outsourcing, we're losing our edge in science and technology and in this crucial time, we seem to have no marketable skill. All is not lost. One thing that we have in abundance that not a lot of countries have is our rich natural resources. The great vast, diverse lands of this great nation has some of the breathtaking scenes one can see in this world. We may not have a rich history of historical monuments, ancient ruins, but we have a rich land with mighty rivers, scenic mountains, amazing volcanos, etc. The silver lining to this is our infrastructure. Thank God for the able leadership in the 1960s, we now have a very efficient highway system, well connected roads, airports in all major cities, etc.

How can we make use of all this to kickstart the economy? The answer is tourism! Countries like Singapore realized long back that if they don't have any marketable skill, tourism is their only way out. We've got so much that a tourist would want to see. There is a catch, however, which I will explain at the end.

We have never promoted our country as a tourist destination to the world. That's because we always wanted less people coming in. If we can promote our country with reasonably cheap packaged tours that include accommodation, food, travel, etc. to major populations that want to see the US like in India, China, Mexico, etc., we can get people to come in. This will provide income to the airline industry, hotel industry, transportation, retail, mom and pop shops, etc.
Innovation has always been our greatest strength and we should innovate ourselves out of this depression.

The obvious problem that you're already thinking about is, how do we weed out non-tourists who come here to stay and never return. The answer lies in sophisticated screening. If the federal govt. passes a bill that says that all new employees, drivers license applicants must now be fingerprinted and the results sent to a central agency, every person who seeks employment, DL will have sent their fingerprints to the central agency. If we fingerprint all the tourists, we can essentially track them down if they decide to stay. This is just one method. There are hundreds of other methods to track down non-tourists. The cost to implement such an agency is probably about 1/1000th of the bailout money or the stimulus package. What we need is more people to think on this idea and implement it.