EU citizen will soon need VISA for US

[Riesstiu IV]

Originally posted by Master Zen


They wouldn't be flooding your country with drugs if you ****ing cokeheads didn't snort it.

They would still be flooding the country anyways because the Mexican government pushes their own citizens to invade our own country. It's about time we put our military on the border with Mexico not in Iraq.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV


They would still be flooding the country anyways because the Mexican government pushes their own citizens to invade our own country.

Along with american buisnesses...

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
They would still be flooding the country anyways because the Mexican government pushes their own citizens to invade our own country. It's about time we put our military on the border with Mexico not in Iraq.

In such case your military should be invading Wal-Mart and all the thousands of other establishments which hire them illegally. Your government could greatly reduce the migration if it really wanted to, but it doesn't since they're not as stupid as you as not realize the net benefit such migration - despite its costs.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


Absolute identification of people, and comparison with specific files without potential errors, would certainly introduce a great complexity in the life of terrorists and criminals.

A lot of these measures just cause inconvenience to travellers. They don't stop terrorists.

But the government gets to be seen as "doing something". A lot of so-called war on terror is like that.

[Ted Striker]

You are very right AH.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison


Well I can say that I was looking at a visit to the US at some point soon, especially with the favourable £/$ exchange rate. But if I ever need a visa to do so, I will forego the idea. And if a lot of people in Europe do this, it will seriously hurt your tourist industry...

Again, that's why it's a bad bluff: the US is simply never going to require tourist visas from visa waiver countries like those in the EU, because we can't afford to: we can't afford the loss of tourism, and we can't afford to hire the extra personnel to ajudicate visas.

What the US wants is to feel assured that everyone who enters its borders has been through some kind of rigorous screening process. In countries without trustworthy governments and citizens, we do this by putting those countries' citizens through a rigorous screening process (much-improved since 9/11), then issuing them a secure travel document (also much-improved since 9/11). In countries with trustworthy governments, we trust them to make sure they're not giving passports to the wrong people. We want to keep trusting the countries we trust; biometric passports will help us do that. It's not an unreasonable request, and it's the direction first-world countries are headed in anyway.

So what's all the fuss about? Again, nothing more than heavy-handed GOP "diplomacy." There were a huge number of ways for the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress to secure EU compliance on this. Typically, they've chosen the least productive, most stupid and offensive strategem they could think of: an ultimatum, and one they won't even follow through on. They're idiots, but in this case at least they're harmless idiots.

[DanS]

You make it sound as if they aren't dragging their feet, and all we would have to do is ask nicely before they spring to action to fulfill our wishes.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DanS
You make it sound as if they aren't dragging their feet, Rufus.

Given what bastards we're being about this, I wouldn't blame them. But you know what? I don't think they're dragging their feet. We're the richest country in the world, we're the ones who got hit by 9/11, we issue far, far fewer passports per citizen than do EU countries, and WE don't have biometric passports yet. This is a much bigger logistical problem for the EU than it is for us, and yet we've given them less time to comply than we gave ourselves. That's ridiculous -- and, again, typical of the bullying that passes in this administration for diplomacy.

[TCO]

We can control our borders as we choose.

[DanS]

OK, if they aren't dragging their feet, where does the process stand right now?

[TCO]

One of the fundamental concepts of security is to eliminate simple vulnerabilities first. It can have an amazing effect. So sure, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE can still get into the country. But that does not mean that simple measures don't still enhance security in the end.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DanS
OK, if they aren't dragging their feet, where does the process stand right now?

Possibly continual extensions while the EU does nothing.

[TCO]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Possibly continual extensions while the EU does nothing.

So much for our friends who said they would do anything to help us. We are on our own to help ourselves. Let them get the ****ing visas.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Possibly continual extensions while the EU does nothing.

Not exactly. The problem is that the US imagined the biometric passport issue to be essentially bilateral: we would work with individual countries to make sure our standards and their standards worked together. But teh problem is that EU countries need to coordinate technology, databases, etc. not only with the US but with each other; they're suddenly in the position of having to develop and implement a tech rollout across national borders that wasn't even under discussion a few years back.

Maybe an analogy will help. Right now, there's some discussion of Congress requiring US States to implement biometric driver's licenses and give the Feds access to the state databases. This will almost certainly happen. But imagine if, instead of requiring each state to do this, Congress required all the states to come up with a single license that not only coordinated each state with the Feds but coordinated all states with each other. How long do you think it would take to roll out those licenses?

That being said, we should expect that non-EU visa waiver countries (Japan, Canada, Singapore) will meet the deadline, or at least get close.

[Alexander's Horse]

We're developing a biometric passport. TCO and Dan are right when they say there is no harm in improving security and plugging the holes.

My main beef is a lot of the effort is misdirected into a kind of catch all, scatter gun approach, hotlines and alert levels and other rubbish feel good security measures, when the real failures were in sophisticated security and intelligence and that is where the resources should go imo.

A small example: I'm having my 5 year security clearance review. I've had to provide about 3 times as much information since 9/11. That's at least 3 times as much resources spent checking me out. What for? I think those resources could be better spent elsewhere if we're really serious about catching terrorists and stopping incidents.