Locked out: Europeans grapple with new US travel ban

PARIS (AP) — A Las Vegas wedding with an Elvis impersonator: Cancelled.

A 2,200-mile trans-America road trip, a voyage of a lifetime that took months to prepare: On ice, too.

The new anti-virus travel ban announced by US President Donald Trump threw Europeans’ best-laid plans — family reunions, birthday celebrations, vacations, trips for both business and pleasure — into utter disarray Thursday.

Trump, in a rare Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday night, said the monthlong restriction on travel from Europe would begin at midnight Friday.

For Europeans brought up on imports of American television, music, sports and fast food, the idea of suddenly being temporarily unwelcome on the other side of the Atlantic was a psychological shock, too, akin to being spurned by an old and familiar friend.

“We were going to get married in Las Vegas, with Elvis. It was going to be epic,” said Sandrine Reynaert, a Parisian who was having to cancel the ceremony on April 20, a date that Gael, her future husband, already has engraved on the inside of his ring.

“It’s strange,” she said of the travel ban.

“Perhaps an overreaction compared to the epidemic.”

Reynaert said she’d take a day off work Friday to devote herself to canceling or adjusting reservations, unravelling the road trip that, as well as Las Vegas, also would have taken them to other iconic spots of Americana: Route 66, Joshua Tree National Park, the Grand Canyon.

Likewise, retired French teacher Jean-Michel Deaux spent months planning the 2,200-mile trans-America road trip that has now evaporated just when it was within touching distance, with a flight into New Orleans that had been booked for March 24.

While Trump said all European travel would be cut off, Homeland Security officials later clarified that the new travel restrictions would apply only to most foreign nationals who have been in the “Schengen Area” at any point for 14 days prior to their scheduled arrival to the United States.

The area includes France, Italy, German, Greece, Austria, Belgium and others in the zone that has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases outside of China.

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