Commerce Department officials say more foreigners visited America this summer than ever before, so why would a domestic tourism industry group of major U.S. corporations issue erroneous releases to try to make people think the opposite?

The answer may have something to do with the companies trying to get their hands on $200 million from congressional Democrats who are trying to use tourism promotion against a law national security experts insist is essential to the U.S. effort to prevent terrorist attacks in this country.

The executive director of Discover America, Geoff Freeman, spreads the line that foreigners see U.S. Customs as so onerous that it chases away potential visitors. Discover America says U.S. tourism is depressed since 9/11, and a major cause is America's poor image. "It's clear what's keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren't welcome."

Discover America calling America an unwelcoming destination, which is parroted in the worldwide press, does not boost tourism, but creates erroneous perceptions that are harmful to tourism.

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Discover America misquoted its own polling data when it claimed a poll of "2,011 participants: all non-resident U.S. travelers" said the U.S. was "the worst country in the world" in the way Customs treats foreign visitors. However, the poll was really of "international travelers," only 29 percent of whom had actually visited the U.S.

After 9/11, foreign tourism dropped dramatically, but since 2003 it has rebounded and surpassed former levels. The Commerce Department's latest data: "[T]he summer of 2007 was a record-breaking season for international travel to the United States, with total international visitation and visitor spending surpassing previous records."

Furthermore, "during June, July and August, 14.3 million international travelers visited the United States, delivering the strongest summer on record."

Discover America says it is "an effort led by some of America's foremost business leaders to strengthen America's image around the globe," including Disney, Marriott, Anheuser-Busch, American Express, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the National Council of State Tourism Directors, and numerous other sponsors that hardly come first to mind as America-bashers.

So it's curious that savvy business people are trying to achieve their goals by issuing erroneously glum statements that reflect negatively upon America, which are then echoed by the global media.

Discover America supports a bill moving through Congress to spend $200 million to support Discover America's Travel Promotion Act, which establishes a fund directed by travel industry leaders, further fed via a fee from all foreign tourists as well as the tourism industry.

The Commerce Department opposes the Travel Promotion Act. Additional fees on foreign travelers' budgets cannot be encouraging them to travel.

Freeman is a public relations professional whose biography offers an insight to his approach: He is "an expert in managing complex issue campaigns and developing innovative outreach strategies to increase support among unlikely allies."

At the Travel Industry Association board meeting in July, Freeman outlined his strategy: "We need to flip the table and change the environment – create a new environment where our industry can thrive."

The environment Freeman refers to is the Democratic takeover of Congress, which is most hostile toward the Patriot Act's added protections against the entry of potentially dangerous foreigners. Thus, a PR campaign emerged, bemoaning such restrictions as a reason to garner congressional funding for Discover America's wealthy members to add to their profits from tourism.

A $1 trillion industry using tax dollars to promote it is blatant "hoggism" at the public trough. The Government Accountability Office found that last year, about 21,000 people whose entry to the U.S. should have been prevented were permitted to enter through border checkpoints, while 200,000 others were caught. Some of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. similarly using falsified documents.

That number is small next to the tens of millions who annually enter through legal checkpoints. But it only took a few terrorists to pull off 9/11.

Discover America may have discovered how some PR campaigns work with Congress, but it needs to re-discover America.

Bruce Kesler blogs at Democracy-Project.com