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The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

economist.com

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Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#111

Post by clock_tower »

muninn_ wrote: post #99
Findeton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through." Well, what would you think if we said the same thing about US-americans (remember the term american is also from Colombians) from a n…

US Americans are just Americans. Only people who are incredibly pedantic think otherwise.

Pedantic or Latin American, in my experience; it's not much fun to be forgotten, and I feel their frustration but can't think of a very good solution. "US-American" doesn't really roll off the tongue... Maybe the US could adopt the same ethnonymn as Usa, Japan? :P

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#112

Post by oblio »

SubZero wrote: post #49
harigov wrote: post #6

What is going on in this world? I was reading news today that the parties on the right side of political spectrum are gaining ground all over Europe. US already has Republicans in power. Every country is becoming more nationalistic. What is driving this change? AFAICT there are no major issues that should have caused this.

As others have stated here, this is largely a reaction to globalization and immigration issues that have been present in the world's view. Globalization has left a large portion of each country behind. Large multinational firms have moved a lot of their low-skill labor to cheaper markets and developing countries, leaving a large swath of former employees in their wake with very little perceived hope of finding anothe…

Citizens from all the countries you mention can just emigrate to Western Europe, with much less hassle.

On top of that, check the terrorism statistics for these countries, it's basically non-existant (maybe Cyprus has some due to Greek-Turkish tensions).

And as a further point, they're all middle-income economies 10k km away, with a combined population of 60 million people. Barely half of Mexico :)

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#113

Post by vixen99 »

lispm wrote: post #72

> Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for this. Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for your nonsense. > and yes, it's a real quote It isn't. > I'm not even European I am.

This is just name calling. Can you please stop and instead produce some reasoned arguments and / or relevant observations to support your contention.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#114

Post by jinglebells »

anonymoose111 wrote: post #35

This is a non story, a few paragraphs down: "Implementing the parliament’s recommendation would require the agreement of all EU members, which would probably take years." Many European countries rely heavily on US tourism, and anything to threaten that could damage their economies.

Interesting. Which countries?

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#115

Post by Exofunctor »

lispm wrote: post #90
Exofunctor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Europe are not dumb enough to fall for your nonsense. Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said. > It isn't. It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim.

> Feel free to actually try to refute anything I said. Refute right-wing propaganda? > It is according to Avraham Burg, and I'm not sure there is anyone more qualified to make such a claim. Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that. On the contrary, Schulz has a decade long track record working for Germany and the European Union.

I'm not right-wing by any stretch of the imagination (pretty hard left, actually), so the fact that instead of actually thinking about my arguments you just slap a label on them and dismiss them out of hand should disturb you.

Perhaps what's confusing to you is that I'm capable of considering the thought process of people I disagree with.

> Point me to a recording where Schulz said anything like that.

You understand that not everything politicians say is recorded? That said, Burg has literally no reason to lie about this.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.574332

> On the contrary, Schulz has a decade long track record working for Germany and the European Union

All you've done is prove my point; even people who work for the EU for a long time appear to have plenty of conflicting non-EU interests.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#116

Post by cplanas »

muninn_ wrote: post #99
Findeton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through." Well, what would you think if we said the same thing about US-americans (remember the term american is also from Colombians) from a n…

US Americans are just Americans. Only people who are incredibly pedantic think otherwise.

Or people for who English is not their first language. In Spanish at least, an "americano" is anyone from the Americas. People from the US are "estadounidenses".

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#117

Post by ascorbic »

sleavey wrote: post #40
bpodgursky wrote: post #3

Yeah... Not going to happen. Americans spend billions on European vacations, and nobody is going to threaten that when push comes to shove (any additional hassle is going to send people to Cancun instead). This is just posturing.

For me to go on vacation to the US, as a European citizen (outside of the 6 countries that are the reason for this action), I just need to get an ESTA for $15 or so. I guess the EU visa will cost something similar. It's not going to change anything.

Citizens of the five countries currently have to get a full B-2 visa to visit the U.S., which costs $160 and involves an interview at the embassy. Why do you think the requirements for U.S. citizens coming to Europe would be much less onerous?

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#118

Post by knz »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #33
am_i_down wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? It is largely a reaction to globalization and the refugee crisis.

> It is largely a reaction to globalization and the refugee crisis. If that is indeed the real reason, it means we as a species have hilariously overblown reactions to perceived threats.

And (in many countries) significantly underestimate the the threat from actual threats like pollution and climate change.

I've been working on a project related to greenhouse gas emission savings lately and it's depressing how "massive" gains in efficiencies are a drop in the bucket of total emissions.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#119

Post by maxerickson »

sandeatr wrote: post #106
rbanffy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer a Middle Eastern or African to a Trump supporter. It's just too dangerous to let them in to spread their ideology. ;-)

Safe to say, Trump supporters aren't traveling to europe.

This isn't true, his base of support is motivated by any number of factors and many of them are financially well off.

Plenty of his political supporters would be happier if he behaved more like the usual politicians but will put up with his shenanigans as long as they get what they want from him.

Re: The European Parliament votes non-bindingly to reintroduce visas for Americans

#120

Post by michalskop »

zaroth wrote: post #98
FabHK wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that it's not binding, it has to go to the Commission first. And, again, it's been an ongoing dispute since 2014. But still probably a reflection of the times. (Note that the US Visa Waiver program is opened to countries that fulfil certain criteria in terms of (high) percentage of visa applications granted, and (low) percentage of admitted people overstaying. So, the US basically argues that they stick to…

That's really interesting. So you are saying the US is actually providing "equal treatment" but since each country's stats are grouped separately, some of them fall outside the requirements and lose out on visa waiver. Of course if you grouped the stats for all of EU it would probably bring everyone in range, but it's hard to argue that would be the right policy for the US.

The point is that the US can arbitrarily keep the number of people who are refused visa as high as it wants. And than it can argue that this number is too high for visa waiver (and I bet the US is doing it for countries like Poland)
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