MANY Americans are focused on the Senate immigration bill’s controversial provisions that may grant a form of amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico.
However, there is also an important but overlooked component of the legislation that may enable Poland and several other anti-terror democratic allies in “New” Europe to become probationary participants in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.
While there is cause for jubilation in Poland and elsewhere over it, our friends should be mindful that the legislation still must clear difficult hurdles in Congress before being enacted into law. Its survival depends on favorable outcomes in expectedly tough House/Senate Conference deliberations, where vastly different immigration bills must be reconciled and votes taken by the House and Senate on the final bill coming out of conference.
As discussed in a Feb. 13 Times Leader opinion piece titled “U.S. should extend visa courtesy to Poles,” the prime purpose of this 20-year-old program is to foster better relations with allies and to eliminate the need for U.S. consular officers to evaluate substantial numbers of visa applicants from friendly countries. The United States currently extends this courtesy to 27 nations, including all Western European countries.
Poland has unsuccessfully sought entry into the VWP ever since Lech Walesa’s Solidarity successfully led the movement to free Central and Eastern Europe from communist domination in 1990. From a historical and contemporary geopolitical perspective, one would be hard-pressed to find a better U.S. ally and friend. Brave Poles stood with the U.S. during the Revolutionary and Cold wars. And today, Polish troops patrol alongside their American friends in Iraq.
Poles have contributed greatly in constructing and shaping our country. An estimated 9 million Americans of Polish descent call the United States home today. They, and their proud ancestors who came to America in three major immigration waves, worked mines, built towns and cities, and became influential members of American society and government. About 824,000 Polish Americans reside in Pennsylvania, many of them in the Wyoming Valley. Quite a few wonder why U.S. legislators have yet to extend the visa courtesy to their 39 million Polish cousins.
Sen. Rick Santorum, the Senate Republican Conference Chairman, has been attempting to rectify this situation. After trying to get Poland into the program last year, through collaboration with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, he reworked the stalled legislation to include several other European countries and piggy-backed an amendment onto the immigration bill with co-sponsor support from the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senator Mikulski.
Santorum’s strategy is to have the VWP amendment survive the conference as he works to defeat other elements of the controversial bill, like the quasi-amnesty provision, which he opposes. The process may seem unwieldy and confusing, but it’s typically the way Congress works.
The previous Senate effort to bring Poland into the VWP was blocked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein who believed that the country did not meet program requirements because U.S. consular officers reject about one-third of Poland’s estimated 150,000 annual visa applications. Santorum classifies the majority of these rejections as “arbitrary determinations of embassy bureaucrats.”
The amendment will allow European “anti-terror” allies, such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to become pilot program participants in the VWP while ensuring there is no compromise of national security. After appropriate approval from the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security in consultation with the Secretary of State, residents of these countries would enjoy the same privilege the United States confers on residents of other VWP countries like France and Germany in being able to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without going through the rigorous, expensive and uncertain proposition of obtaining a U.S. visa. Probationary participants will be given two years to come into full compliance with program requirements.
Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and Senate will soon appoint conferees to iron out differences in the immigration bills passed by each chamber of Congress. For the VWP provision to survive conference, it may need some sympathetic legislators.
While Congress wrestles with the question of making it possible for 11 million illegal immigrants to become legal U.S. residents, it should recognize the wisdom and fairness of allowing citizens of some key U.S. “anti-terror” allies from Europe, like Poland, to visit our country for only 90 days. U.S. legislators have a golden opportunity to demonstrate that we truly appreciate their friendship. Let’s hope they do.
Fred Gedrich is an Avoca native and Wilkes College graduate. He is also a foreign policy and national security analyst, a former U.S. State Department official, and a contributing author to “War Footing.”
Source:centredaily.com
