When I wrote the original article I happened to have missed a key aspect to the EU’s resentment over some countries needing a visa to enter the US and Canada. What may that be?
Why nothing short of hypocrisy.
To explain the hypocrisy, you have to start with the workings of the EU treaties, and the different levels of each. I won’t bore you with details (because I really don’t know them), but there is economic free trade treaty, certain areas of the law treaty, like human rights, and then there is a travel area, called the Schengen Zone, that allows for free movement of travel between countries, like within the US. (I’m sure I’m missing some, but it’s all really convoluted.)
Either way though, the hypocrisy comes into play by the EU wanting the US and Canada to allow visa free entry to countries outside of the Schengen Zone. Poland is the only country in the Schengen Zone that we require a visa from.
Of the four remaining, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria, the EU still requires them to have a passport to enter the Schengen Zone, all for various reasons. Now, if the EU hasn’t fully accepted these countries, why should the US and Canada.
As is always the case, hypocrisy dulls the moral high ground when negotiating. Sorry EU.
As for the Polish, a 2015 NPR interview with Jessica Vaughan from the Center for Immigration Studies shows that the Polish “have high refusal rates. That’s the number of people who apply for a visa and get rejected for reasons like not having a stable job or staying too long on a past visa.”
If that is the reasoning for restricting the Polish, it can be assumed that it is the same case for the other four countries. And so with that, I have to say that I support restricting those travelers.