We are seeing a lot of articles, mostly from local news outlets on the West Coast, which are reporting the sudden windfall by their local port of cruise ships diverted from Mexican ports.
Most are reporting the reason is that the US Government has warned against nonessential travel to Mexico due to the H1N1 virus (that most regular people are still calling swine flu), and that the cruise lines have heeded that warning. Most of them are also reporting, most of them excitedly (many gleefully), the sizable economic benefits of having a large cruise ship call for a day. Even major cities like San Diego and San Francisco are having their civic heads turned by these ships bringing an expected million dollars to their communities. Not only are the cruise lines paying the ports for being there, but local merchants are also poised for a major unexpected windfall.
The sad part is that almost none of them, if any, acknowledge (let alone empathize) that for every one of those dollars coming into their city, it's a dollar not going into a Mexican port, most of whom have almost their entire economies based on tourism.
The cruise lines have done the right thing by suspending their calls in Mexico. The cross section of the population which takes cruises could easily and rapidly spread the influenza virus far and wide.
We're just saying that there needs to be some recognition that the good fortune on one side of the border is resulting in misery on the other.
