National parks to start charging non-citizens higher fees to enter

Not The Bee ^ | November 26, 2025 | Harris Rigby

[Morgana]

Now this is America First:

Yes, the National Park Service is going to start charging foreign tourists higher fees to visit certain parks across the United States, in apparent accordance with Trump's America First agenda.

Foreigners don't contribute tax dollars to run the parks? Then they're going to pay extra to visit.

The U.S. Interior Department said Tuesday the National Park Service is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. national parks each year $100 per person to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents.

The fee change for international visitors will impact 11 national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite, according to the Interior Department.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Travel
KEYWORDS: 3rdworldtactic

[Morgana]

Okay I've missed it. Someone here tell me what they did to our national parks?

I've heard the Chinese can be a pain, anything else?

[citizen]

$38 Trillion in debt. Charge them all!

[Peter ODonnell]

I wonder how they plan to enforce this as many foreign visitors are driving rental cars with U.S. plates and they only ask for photo I.D. if you produce an annual pass (the America-the-Beautiful pass was $80 and now it will be $250, that gets you into all parks for a year after purchase, a real bargain even when daily entrance fees were $30 to $50 for the more popular parks). I read that the daily fees for those selected higher-volume parks will increase to $100 for foreign visitors. I think all that’s going to do is to shorten visits to one day which will then have an impact on nearby and in-park businesses, so once again, it’s not classic economics at work here. I don’t mind paying a bit extra as a non-taxpayer but $100 a day is going to be a strong deterrent and frankly I don’t see any economic sense in it, clearly the MAGA base have regular tourists and dangerous illegal immigrants confused. 99% of tourists plan to go home and not overstay their welcome, why take out the frustrations on us when it’s people from various other countries that don’t plan to visit your national parks who are causing all the problems?

The $250 annual pass is fair enough, I would say, but at some point these counter-intuitive economic programs are going to crash the economy altogether rather than making anybody great again, it may make it the 1930s again. The Democrats will love that.

[A strike]

The State of Hawaii has lots of non resident fees..

soak tourists while simultaneously saying “Kill haoles”

[nuconvert]

Trying to finance the upkeep & use of the parks. I get it.
I don’t know how they came up with these numbers, but the fees seem too high not to have a fairly significant effect on the number of foreign visitors, and therefore the revenues to small businesses in the towns that survive on the $ spent by those visitors. (estimates are about 15 million foreigner visitors/year)

[No name given]

Exactly!

[metmom]

Good.

I’ve seen what foreign nationals do to our parks in the way of littering. (watched them do it at the Grand Canyon).

If they litter and pollute, they need to be charged more for someone to clean it up.

[trebb]

I have no problem with that - Seattle charges $49.00 a head to walk into the Space Needle - and then they can spend more at the restaurant....

[crusty old prospector]

I’ve been saying this for years. I would put a cap on them. Americans first!

[AZJeep]

I remember, in Europe, they will charge you quite lot more in some places, if you are not EU citizen!
I actually threw some fib in one place, but it did not work. So we left.

[JesusIsLord]

I have no problem charging foreigners, who don't pay a dime in taxes that maintain our parks, to pay extra. My question is, how do the parks determine who is and who isn't a foreigner? Our nation doesn't maintain national id cards and my understanding is that some states will issue driver licenses to foreigner.

I guess the same question could be asked for ICE arrests. Without requiring people to carry or id themselves with a national ID card, how are ICE agents identifying those here illegally?

[hal ogen]

Have you ever traveled internationally? Most countries soak the “foreign” traveler a lot to see their attractions. Poor people both here abroad don’t travel internationally and tour. We are talking about the relatively rich small percentage who travel internationally.

[Moltke]

Interesting, but news to me. Do you have any examples? I don’t travel so much anymore to any of the “touristy” places.

[jimtorr]

Seems reasonable to me. Many other countries charge non-citizens more to visit national attractions. Thailand, for one.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Works for me!

[webheart]

I have seen tourists from other countries feeding the animals in Yosemite on more than one occasion. I had to ask some not to feed the raccoons that live under the Curry Village store. They also let their kids feed the chipmunks on the way up to Vernal Falls. You can tell them because they are speaking languages other than English or Spanish and they have enormous cameras. By the way I welcome them to California whenever I speak to them. They are bringing money into our economy.