Center for European Policy Analysis

Keeping the Tallinn Promise: The Case for Central European Inclusion in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program

By Robert Wilson, Efthymia Drolapas, Christine Le Jeune, and Emily Peckenham

Executive Summary

For years, the former communist countries of Central Europe have lobbied for inclusion in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP). American policymakers have been slow to grant the request due to a combination of post-9/11 security concerns and fears about a mass influx of foreign laborers flooding the American economy. These arguments are misleading and, in many ways, wrong. Maintaining a rigid entry process for non-immigrant foreign nationals actually weakens U.S. national security and harms the economy. Though imperfect, the VWP is a necessary system which, with some adjustments, has the potential to lure more foreign tourists while effectively screening potential terrorists. U.S. policymakers should modernize and expand the program.

Introduction

For more than four years, the former communist countries of Central Europe have lobbied unsuccessfully for inclusion in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP). President Bush’s October 2006 pledge in Tallinn, Estonia to include these countries in the program raised expectations that the years of diplomatic effort had finally yield results. However, key U.S. policymakers continue to oppose the idea on both economic and security grounds. In both cases, the costs of continuing to exclude these countries from the VWP ultimately outweigh the benefits. Policymakers should redouble efforts to deliver on Bush’s promise to expand the program. Current efforts in Congress are a step in the right direction. But more work remains to be done before the VWP can transition from the contentious and problematic program it is today into the efficient and beneficial system it has the potential to become. Without these changes, the policy behind the VWP will fail to either promote the ideals for which it was originally designed or provide adequate security to a terrorism- and immigration-weary nation.

Post-Communist “Westernization” and the VWP

Since the fall of Communism, the nations of Central Europe — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria — have labored to shed their former Eastern Bloc image and regain a place among the nations of the West. These efforts have met with considerable success — including, most notably, the absorption of all ten countries into both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Nevertheless, lingering discrepancies between Washington’s treatment of the historically capitalist countries of Western Europe and the formerly communist Central European countries, has impeded the development of stronger relations between the United States and its newest — and arguably strongest —allies. Among the issues affecting U.S.-Central European relations, the exclusion of Central European nations from the VWP is now widely held to be the chief diplomatic stumbling block.

VWP Inclusion: The Next Logical Step?

In the years before the fall of Communism, Americans could travel to the countries of Western Europe without needing a visa — and vice-versa. Under this arrangement, the citizens of the United States’ closest allies — e.g., the countries of NATO plus Japan and Australia — were afforded reciprocal visa-free access to each others’ countries. This allowed for greater cross-cultural dialogue and understanding, leading to a marked increase in study abroad and student exchange programs, tourism and foreign investment. Partly as a result, Europe today accounts for 70 percent of all foreign investment in the United States. The top ten countries for foreign investment in the United States are participants in the VWP.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly-democratized countries of Central Europe followed suit, liberalizing not only their governments and economies, but visa requirements as well. As a result, Western Europeans, Americans and many others could cross these formerly-forbidden borders hassle-free.  

The United States has been slow to respond in kind. The U.S. government continues to require visa-free reciprocity from VWP participants while ignoring the growing number of European countries which — despite having abolished visa requirements for Americans and meeting almost all of the criteria for VWP membership — still need visas to travel to the United States. Many of these countries have supported U.S. policy initiatives at the risk of antagonizing fellow EU members, such as the run up to the invasion of Iraq and the recent row over CIA extraordinary renditions. Despite this support — and contrary to our own statutorily-mandated demand for reciprocity in all visa arrangements — the Central Europeans’ decade-long plea for visa-free status has proven fruitless.

The “Tallinn Promise”

Regional hopes for a change in U.S. visa policy were raised in November 2006 when President Bush pledged — in a speech dubbed the “Tallinn Promise” given in the Estonian capital — to expand the VWP to include most Central European countries. During the speech President Bush commented on the resolute stance of the non-VWP EU countries, describing the Estonian government’s demand for inclusion in the program as “straightforward and very frank.” Bush stated his intention to work with Congress to modify the VWP in order to allow quicker, easier access to the United States for the citizens of nations such as Estonia. The promise to revise U.S. visa policy to allow “nations like Estonia” to join the VWP piqued the interest not only of Central European governments, but also of the region’s citizens, many of whom have family members residing in the United States. A member of NATO and the EU and a supporter of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Estonia is representative of a region whose countries have gained membership in key Western institutions and maintained largely pro-American foreign policies.  

However, visa waiver reform has progressed at a slower pace than the Central Europeans had hoped. Many members of Congress were reluctant to appear to be making the United States more accessible to foreign nationals. Many also had concerns about border control. Perhaps expecting such Congressional opposition, President Bush had been careful to qualify during his Tallinn speech that any loosening of the current VWP membership criteria would only come as new, technology-based security measures were incorporated into both the VWP and international points of entry.

Cherry-Picking VWP Extension

In May 2007, the U.S. Senate began debating a bill entitled the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.” The first major step toward fulfilling the President’s promise, this legislation addresses many of the current problems in U.S. visa-waiver policy. However, progress on the VWP components in the bill has been threatened, not by Congressional concerns over expanding the VWP per se, but because they are part of a larger immigration reform package that faces intense opposition from those who see it as tantamount to providing “amnesty” for illegal aliens.

Of greatest relevance to the Central Europeans is the language of Title IV, Section 413 of the bill, which outlines the revised criteria for countries seeking to join the VWP. One such criterion is the specification that they be a current EU member state. This provision does more than merely limit the class of potential VWP members; it also sends an important message to Brussels, where EU decision-makers have championed the Central European position on the VWP in an attempt to win the affection of its newest member states. By specifically using EU membership as a prerequisite for VWP fast-track, the U.S. government has made a demonstrable effort to appease the EU.

A second crucial aspect of the bill is the requirement that any country seeking to join the program must be providing “material support” to U.S. operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. The “material support” provision is defined as “the equivalent of, but not less than, a battalion (which consists of 300 to 1,000 military personnel) . . . to provide training, logistical or tactical support, or a military presence.” The Senate’s coupling of troop commitments with bilateral visa regime requirements evidences a clear dichotomy of purpose regarding American visa law: security versus diplomacy.

Of even greater interest to Central Europe is what the bill says about the long-standing requirement that VWP members have a visa-refusal rate of 3 percent or less. As promised by President Bush in his Tallinn speech, this requirement was addressed, though perhaps not quite to the extent that Central Europeans had hoped. In an apparent compromise, the legislation stops short of abolishing the refusal rate stipulation altogether, instead adjusting how and when the rate is determined. The refusal rates are now determined after the expiration of the first full year of the country’s admission into the EU.

There are several possible rationales for this change. The first is that, by deferring visa refusal rates until the first anniversary of EU membership, the most recent — and, presumably, most favorable — figures can be used in determining qualification for VWP admission. Another possible explanation is that the one-year requirement would prohibit the most recent entrants into the EU — Romania and Bulgaria, who joined in January 2007 — from immediately taking advantage of the relaxed entry requirements. This allows the United States to essentially cherry-pick the EU countries that will be granted expedited VWP membership while minimizing the potential for diplomatic fall-out. Although this will not completely satisfy Brussels’ demand for complete visa reciprocity for all EU citizens, it takes a major step towards diffusing the visa row by dispelling the notion that VWP “roadmap nations” are simply left to languish indefinitely outside the transatlantic club.

Security Concerns Overblown?

The de facto U.S. argument against immediate visa-waiver status for Central European countries is national security. However, if the United States continues to consider the greatest threat to national security to be Muslim extremists, the Central Europeans present no discernable threat. Central Europe and the Baltic states have a combined Muslim population of less than 100,000, compared to over 13 million Muslims residing in the countries of Western Europe — countries that are already participating in the VWP.

The heightened desire to exclude countries from the program is itself increasing the risks to U.S. national security. By erecting barriers to foreign visitors, the U.S. government has fueled an image of “Fortress America” that has done much to perpetuate ill-will towards the United States. In the period since September 11, 2001, America’s heavy-handed approach to travel security has soured many foreign travelers’ opinions of the United States. Research indicates that people who have visited the United States on vacation, student exchange programs or on business tend to have a significantly more pro-American outlook than those that have only experienced the United States through the media and word-of-mouth.

Beyond public opinion, there is a documented relationship between visa-waiving agreements and the strength of bilateral diplomatic relations at the state-to-state level. Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ (CSIS) East Europe Project describes the repercussions of the current asymmetrical American visa regulations in political, social, economic and strategic terms. As globalization and market liberalization increasingly opens the floodgate of American goods and culture into the former Eastern Bloc, without reciprocal reductions in barriers to travel to America, the unbalanced flow fosters ill-will and anti-Americanism.

Economic Boon — or Bust?

The second major argument against extending VWP membership to the countries of Central Europe is that it would damage the U.S. economy. Many policymakers worry that, by waiving or relaxing the visa refusal-rate criteria to include less-wealthy nations, the United States would open the way for an influx of poor, unskilled workers flooding the country through the auspices of the VWP. The fear is that these tourist-immigrant hybrids would enter the country as travelers, overstay the 90-day visitation period and disappear into the vacuum of black market employment. Fears over potential VWP “overstays” are likely derived from the current problem of illegal immigrants crossing the United States’ southern border with Mexico. While the flow of illegal aliens across the southern border is both real and worthy of debate regarding its effects on the United States, there is no logical or factual correlation between illegal immigration from Latin America and non-immigrant visa-waiver reciprocity for Central Europe.

First, the analysis used to determine “likely overstays” is unreliable and based on the subjective judgment of under-informed consular personnel. It is likely that many legitimate tourists — those who not only possess the financial means to travel and spend freely, but who also possess an unqualified intent to return home — are rejected simply because of the perception that their country is “poor.”

Second, Central Europeans are unlikely to overstay their visa-free travel period for the purposes of finding employment or permanent relocation in the United States. The sheer cost of transit to the United States inherently pre-selects a wealthier class of traveler. Moreover, the ability of Central Europeans to work legally in an increasing number of EU countries — countries that are close to their home countries, families and friends — makes the United States a far less attractive destination for those who actually want to emigrate for economic purposes. This means that, among those visa applicants that are being screened by U.S. embassy staff at any given moment, the proportion that are genuinely interested in permanent, work-related relocation to the United States is minimal.

Thus, one benefit of including Central Europe in the VWP is that it would allow for reassignment of U.S. visa personnel to higher-risk countries, and could even allow for a reduction in consular staff, resulting in more efficiency and reduced cost to the American taxpayer.

The biggest benefit, however, would come in the tourist industry. Studies show that, since its inception, the VWP has promoted tourism and encouraged greater commercial exchange, with an annual impact on the U.S. economy of between $75 billion and $100 billion. Visitors entering under the VWP spend approximately 44 percent more than those who must undergo the rigors of the visa application process. The Commerce Department estimates that dismantling the VWP would have an immediate impact of $28 billion in lost revenue and would result in three million fewer tourists coming to the United States in the first five years after the blanket reinstatement of visa requirements for all foreign nationals. If decreasing the reach of the VWP would have such an immediate and deleterious effect, the natural assumption is that expanding the VWP would bolster the national economy by not only facilitating easier travel to the United States, but by encouraging greater spending once those visitors arrive.

The VWP’s Benefits Outweigh its Costs

For all its imperfections, the VWP is more beneficial than it is costly to the United States. This is true in both national security and economic realms.

Effective Resource Allocation Increases National Security

The current state of the VWP is plagued by ineffective screening mechanisms, arbitrary regulations and haphazard implementation, with the concomitant result of perceived reductions in national security and all-too-real problems in international diplomacy. The overarching issue regarding the VWP is how to best resolve the security problems inherent to visa-free travel while still maintaining a system that encourages trade and tourism and reduces bureaucracy. The United States must increase its cooperation with allies abroad to facilitate a more accurate and precise system of monitoring international travel. The VWP need not threaten our national security; in fact, participation in the VWP can be an effective carrot-and-stick tool to encourage greater cooperation and increased security measures from our allies abroad.

Overly fortifying our ports of entry for foreign visitors carries serious economic, political and even security risks. Without a re-evaluation of the methods employed to monitor the nation’s points of entry, we risk overburdening our personnel, clogging our channels of commerce and alienating our allies. Maximizing national security requires the efficient use of both funds and manpower. With a finite supply of money and personnel, every security measure should be evaluated on a cost-benefit basis. The VWP has the dual effect of streamlining the visa process for foreign nationals as well as for American consular officials and border agents. By updating the VWP through the inclusion of Central Europe, the taxpayer dollars currently being wasted on screening Central European visa applications could be redirected to the programs that need increased funding to target real threats to the United States.

The contrary demands of free movement of goods and people at the country’s perimeter need not be inconsistent with the goals of increased screening and security. Current U.S. visa regulations are haphazard, contentious and increasingly, an Achilles heel of national security. By working with strategic allies such as the EU, the United States can implement a cost-effective and secure screening system that befits the longstanding historical, social and economic transatlantic relationship and encourages further growth in the areas of international trade and tourism.

An Overly Exclusive VWP Hurts the American Economy

In many countries, including staunch American allies Poland and the Czech Republic, the visa issue is widely considered the dominant cause of anti-American sentiment. A recent poll of the tourism industry reveals the true extent of the problems faced by citizens of both VWP and non-VWP countries who wish to visit the United States. The results of this poll revealed a worldwide belief that the United States is an unappealing travel destination because of the difficult entry process (for both VWP and non-VWP passport holders), as well as because of the inhospitable treatment by immigration officers towards foreign visitors. Interestingly, the people who responded to this poll held a favorable view of the United States as a whole by a margin of three to one, suggesting that not only is U.S. policy discouraging potential visitors, but that the worldwide negative impressions of our visa policies are borne out of widely-held and largely valid perceptions, and not the result of mere anti-Americanism.

Comparing the VWP member state of Portugal with the non-VWP Czech Republic provides a concrete look at the effects of visa-free travel on tourism and cultural exchange. Since the 1989 Velvet Revolution that marked the end of Communism in the Czech Republic, the country’s economy has burgeoned. By some calculations, the post-communist nation has become wealthier than Portugal. The two countries both have just over 10 million residents, and the Czech Republic now eclipses Portugal in per capita gross domestic product, U.S. foreign direct investment and purchasing power parity as a percentage of the world total output.

However, over twice as many Portuguese visit the United States each year compared to their counterparts in the Czech Republic. Portugal’s status as a VWP member state is the most logical explanation for this discrepancy. Moreover, with the Czech Republic’s economic growth outpacing that of many of its Western counterparts, the Czechs represent an increasingly wealthy and well-traveled group who are dissuaded from visiting America because of U.S. visa policy.

In addition to being some of America’s closest allies, current VWP members happen to be some of the world’s wealthiest countries. It is arguable that the VWP serves as a mechanism for facilitating travel to the United States for nations whose citizens will have the greatest disposable income to spend once they arrive. Whether or not the program was designed with this intent, it certainly has this effect. The new reality in Europe is that the Central Europeans are becoming as wealthy as — and in some cases, wealthier than — their Western neighbors. If international diplomacy and the idea of quid pro quo are not sufficient reasons to expand the VWP, the economic bottom-line should be.

Moving in the Right Direction, But Not There Yet

For all of these reasons, the VWP should be expanded to include the countries of Central Europe. However, the program needs more than just expansion if it is to remain the effective and efficient system that has benefited the United States and its allies for the past 20 years. While expanding the VWP should be a top priority for Congress, it is imperative that the program be modernized to incorporate the latest technologies and security measures.

The Bush administration, which has championed the need to expand the VWP, argues that expanding and modernizing the program should occur concurrently. To allay the concerns of VWP-expansion skeptics, the administration has proposed that new security protocols initially only apply to the new VWP entrants before gradually being applied to other countries already participating in the program. These new security measures consist of a laundry list of proposed ideas, four of which are mandatory: electronic pre-flight collection of passenger data (possibly using a hybrid paper and Internet-based system like the one used by Australia); a robust passenger information exchange between VWP countries and the United States (probably requiring passenger lists to be transmitted prior to departure instead of within 60 minutes of take-off, as current regulations stipulate); guaranteed and efficient reporting of lost or stolen passports; and the assurance by all VWP countries that any illegal foreign national deported by the United States will be repatriated by its home country.

Solutions to Unresolved VWP Issues

These measures are positive steps towards securing U.S. borders. Unfortunately, they do not completely address one of the biggest concerns of the critics: that the last line of defense against would-be terrorists seeking entry into the United States under the VWP is a hurried, under-informed and typically monolingual border agent. These agents largely have little understanding of the various nationalities and ethnicities they see everyday, much less the specific types of threats they may pose to the United States. One possible solution to this problem is to incorporate the Visa Security Officer (VSO) program that is currently being used in high-risk, non-VWP countries as an additional screening mechanism. Under the VSO system, highly-trained multilingual specialists work alongside normal consular staff during the visa application interview process. This system could easily be incorporated as a supplement to the border control agents currently securing America’s ports of entry. The obvious step would be to assign country-specific VSO agents to customs and immigration queues based on the point of origin of the incoming flight. This would allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to question persons entering under VWP in their native language, producing a more effective screening system. Additionally, by using the passenger lists supplied by the airlines, the DHS could check the list for passengers of other, high-risk nationalities and station the appropriate VSO agents at immigration queues.

While the VWP is not without its shortcomings, there are a multitude of ways to not only increase the effectiveness of the VWP itself, but to bolster the wider border security system using the VWP as a means of quickly, yet efficiently, processing millions of foreign nationals as they enter the United States. Those who call for the dissolution of the VWP fail to recognize that an effective system of national border security requires funding, and that the resulting $28 billion hit to the economy would result in a diminished pool of resources — and likely a subsequent reduction in funding. The VWP should be seen not only as a revenue-generating system, but one that also benefits the bottom line and border security by allowing scarce resources to be better allocated.

The Threat of a Congress Distracted by ‘Amnesty’

While the future of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) is increasingly in doubt, it is critical that reforming the VWP not fall victim to the contentious, but largely unrelated, issue of immigration reform. The political wrangling over amnesty and the process of legalizing illegal immigrants is a distraction from the VWP, the expansion of which has the potential to bring increased international goodwill towards America, a stronger economy and more robust border security. Reforming the VWP would provide immediate benefits with very few downsides. If the CIRA ultimately fails — which is a very real possibility despite the Bush administration’s dedication to a solution — the United States should honor the President’s promises to its allies and reform the VWP to allow participation by Central Europe.

With the combination of escalating tensions with Russia over missile defense, a continuing need for international support of U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the relation between continued pro-American sentiment in Central and Europe and visa-waiver reciprocity, it is crucial that the contentious elements of current legislation not overshadow those elements that promise mutual benefits to the United States and its Central European allies.

Conclusion: Improving a Flawed but Necessary System

The more the policymakers in Washington and the public at large understand what is at stake in the VWP, the greater the support will be for maintaining and expanding the system. The VWP’s inclusion in the CIRA is a misnomer. It has nothing to do with immigration — it exclusively relates to non-immigrants and, in fact, could aid the fight against illegal immigration by freeing up resources and manpower currently being squandered by needlessly interviewing and screening Central Europeans.

The current political climate is unreceptive to the idea of making the United States a more accessible nation, a result not only of the “amnesty” fears and frustration over illegal immigration, but also residual concerns over terrorism. While it is undeniable that terrorists have manipulated the VWP in order to gain access to the United States, and that a system such as the VWP may be abused, it is also undeniable that the VWP is an economic, diplomatic and national security necessity.

Robert Wilson is a Research Assistant at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is currently a dual degree graduate student, pursuing a Juris Doctorate Degree at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a Master’s Degree in International Business Administration with a Finance focus at the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business.

Christine Le Jeune, Efthymia Drolapas and Emily Peckenham are former Research Assistants at the Center for European Policy Analysis and currently completing coursework for their Master’s Degrees at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University.

The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a Washington, DC-based independent, non-profit, non-partisan public policy research institute dedicated to the study of Central Europe. Founded in 2005, CEPA provides a forum for scholarly research, writing, and debate on key issues affecting the countries and economies of the Central European region, their membership in the European Union (EU) and relationship with the United States.

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