11 ms·

Tit for tat is a great model in pre-school. The more mature response is to investigate the underlying issues. Instead of putting your fingers in your ears and

by zaroth 8y ago

Tit for tat is a great model in pre-school. The more mature response is to investigate the underlying issues. Instead of putting your fingers in your ears and yelling “We are EU, you must treat us all the same” there could be some acknowledgement that travelers from those countries are disproportionately overstayers and there is a justifiable reason to need to more closely track them. If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place. Policy should be set based on the reality on the ground and not merely policital fantasy. If those countries citizens are not in fact disproportionate over-stayers than the US should change their policy and apologize. EDIT: This short brief [1] seems to imply there’s room for improvement on the US side. I don’t quite understand why the subjective visa refusal rate is so high for some of these countries when the overstay rate is so low. Unless you argue that the refusals are preventing the overstays, but that is very much unproven. [1] - https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/IB4812.pdf https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/IB4812....

sorokod 8y ago
Tit for tat is an effective strategy for Prisoner's dilemma : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...
ketzu 8y ago
Tit for tat is, as far as I know, very common in diplomatic relationships between countries. The EU wants it's citenzens treated the same, the way you phrased it already accepts that it's the case for the US. The equivalent would be more: "If travelers from any state of the US are overstaying in the EU, I would expect travelers from that US State to need a visa." Would you still appreciate that? (This is a genuine question not hyperbole.)
jkaplowitz 8y ago
Due to the nature of the Schengen area and the greater independence of an EU member state compared to a US state, there's no real way to track whether a US citizen overstays more in some parts of the Schengen area than others. And I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that at least some of the EU member states in question are on track to join Schengen before the time ETIAS launches in 2021.
- virtualwhys 8y ago
  > there's no real way to track whether a US citizen overstays more in some parts of the Schengen area than others. Doesn't matter, it's 90 days applied to the entire Schengen area, regardless of which member state(s) you visited.
  - jkaplowitz 8y ago
    Yes, but the person I was responding to found it relevant whether Americans are more likely to overstay in particular EU countries such as the ones on which the US imposes visa requirements. The only possible tracking (for short-term entries) is at the Schengen level, as you say; the US does not require visas from most Schengen nationals. But the US does require ESTA+VWP from them if they don't seek a visa, and this is basically analogous to ETIAS.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    But (for now), there isn’t always a passport-control between Schengen and non-Schengen zones. E.g. your time in Monaco, Andorra or Ireland. Dunno if your time in Ireland is kept track of or not if you fly to/from it.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  Self-replying to note that one of the EU member states on which the US imposes visa requirements, Poland, is already in Schengen. (Edit window has passed.)
tapland 8y ago
> If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place. You mean US citizens from particular states? Because that's what the equivalent would be.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Not really. States are not countries.
  - askmike 8y ago
    Why does that matter? There are huge differences culturally and socioeconomically between different states (and even areas). States have very different laws with a "federal government" managing it all. I don't see how it's very different from EU member states and the EU in Brussel managing it all.
    - ameister14 8y ago
      There are a few ways it's very different. First is that the US has a national standard process for obtaining a passport that applies regardless of what state you're in. That is not the case for the EU. Second, not all EU member countries are parties to all the same treaties, again, unlike the US. Third, each EU country has its own domestic and international policy, restricted that may be as regards to international agreements on production. Fourth, as it is possible for a member state to enter or leave the EU, unlike the US, having a treaty with the EU as a whole makes the United States bound to potential new members that it did not have the opportunity to individually evaluate.
      - benj111 8y ago
        "potential new members that it did not have the opportunity to individually evaluate" Theres nothing stopping the US adding a state.
        8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
learc83 8y ago
If people from Hawaii were overstaying in Japan, the US wouldn't be fine with Japan requiring visas for residents of Hawaii. Part of the purpose of the EU is to present a united front when dealing with other countries. Collective bargaining doesn't work if you don't act collectively. >If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries. The only way to do this would be to require Visas to the whole EU because of the lack of internal border controls (for most of the EU).
- SllX 8y ago
  Hawaii isn’t a sovereign nation with its own foreign service.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    It’s an analogy as Hawaii is one of the 50 United States. The EU Schengen zone is similar to the US as there is free travel between countries within the zone.
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      And even beyond that the EU states all (by EU regulation) willingly stand in for each other when it comes to their citizens in foreign countries. If you're from a big country like France or Germany, you don't notice, but if you're from a smaller country like Portugal this means when you realise your country does not even have consular facilities in the random place you're visiting, you don't worry, the French or Germans do and you're an EU citizen, so they'll sub for your own consular officials as needed.
      - lisper 8y ago
        The difference is that U.S. passports don't distinguish which state you are a citizen of. Hawaii does not have its own representative in the United Nations. Hawaii does not have its own ambassadors and consulates. EU passports do distinguish which country you are a citizen of. Each EU country has its own representative in the U.N. and its own ambassadors and consulates [1]. Free travel is not the feature that is legally indicative of a nation. [1] Yes, I know that EU consulates can be shared by other EU citizens. Nonetheless, legally there is no such thing as "an EU consulate" or "an ambassador from the EU" or a generic EU passport. It really is a radically different model from the EU. (The most notable difference is that countries can unilaterally withdraw from the EU without triggering a civil war within the EU. States can't.)
PunchTornado 8y ago
are you ok with EU imposing visas for some US states and not for others?
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  I'm more than OK with that. Especially given that I have a pretty good idea what state Europeans are more likely to have a critical opinion of.
- erentz 8y ago
  How would they do that given US states do not have citizens or passports?
  - toast0 8y ago
    Use state of birth, if it's encoded on the passports, and if not, require a visa from everyone until state of birth is encoded on the passports. As a point of order, US states do have citizens. As a US citizen, I'm also a citizen of the state in which I reside.
    - virtualwhys 8y ago
      You're a resident of the state in which you reside. I have never heard anyone say, for example, "I am a citizen of the state of Massachusetts". That you can move to another state and claim residency there implies what residency is, transient, whereas citizenship is permanent.
      - toast0 8y ago
        The fourteenth amendment states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
    - erentz 8y ago
      So someone born in Morocco who moved to France and became a French citizen should be denied visa free entry to the US because their citizenship by your standard is actually Moroccan.
gambiting 8y ago
>>there could be some acknowledgement that travelers from those countries are disproportionately overstayers and there is a justifiable reason to need to more closely track them. That used to be the case for Poland. After the fall of communism it was extremely popular to travel to the US on a tourist visa and stay - the much higher pay and standard of living were generally worth the risk. But nowadays? In 2019? Why the fuck would anyone from Poland do that is beyond me. The pay is hardly any better if at all, plus you risk getting absolutely fucked over if you have to go to a hospital, not to mention that you could be deported at any time. It just makes no sense considering you can hop on a cheap ryanair flight to anywhere else in Europe and get paid much better, have access to guaranteed healthcare, paid holiday/sick leave and all the other rights that we enjoy as EU citizens. US seems to be living in this bubble from 20 years ago where Polish citizens used to overstay their tourist visas massively - but times have changed, and the visa requirements haven't.
rmind 8y ago
Just a few points: - Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality. Regardless whether you think it is pre-school model or not, this is what pretty much all countries do, as it is a perfectly rational way (and sometimes even the only way) to defend your interests. By rational I am talking about the Game Theory kind of rational. :) - You suggest to look at each EU country individually (just also keep in mind that there are no border controls beetween the EU countries in the Schengen Zone). In such case, should we also look at each US state individually (because they are also not uniform, e.g. some are much poorer than the others)? EU as a whole has much greater weight and leverage. The point I am making here is that it is another geopolitical reality: countries use their weight and, for example, US uses its weight to exert its influence pretty much all over the world. Well, so does the EU in this case, whether the US likes it or not. - Your point about the citizens of those countries being disproportionate overstayers is not true. As a matter of fact, the overstay rate of these countries is lower than some of those which are already in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), e.g. compare those fives countries with Spain, Greece, Hungary, etc. So, if there is some kind of threshold they cross, then it should apply to the current VWP countries to, shouldn't it? Please the see offical US Homeland Security report as a reference here: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fiscal-year-2017-entryexit-overstay-report https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fiscal-year-2017-entryexit-o...
- TomVDB 8y ago
  VISA requirements only for those states that voted a particular way during, say, presidential elections would be comical. Though not too different from imposing trade sanction on those products that hit some states much harder than others.
- lisper 8y ago
  > Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality. It's also an evolutionarily stable strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
  - m463 8y ago
    I learned about it in regard to the prisoner's dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma > Strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma ... > The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move. Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness". When the opponent defects, on the next move, the player sometimes cooperates anyway, with a small probability (around 1–5%). This allows for occasional recovery from getting trapped in a cycle of defections. The exact probability depends on the line-up of opponents.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Tit for tat is a fantastic model, much like GRIM[1] because it has the advantage of being simple, clear and easily checkable. The EU as an organisation is meant to fight, as one, for its member states’ interests. Easily verified policy makes coordination far, far easier, as does legal and organisational equality. The U.K. expected the EU to throw Ireland under the bus when it came to Brexit and they didn’t because it’s a partnership of nominal equals. For the same reason the EU is extremely strongly motivated to advocate for all its citizens to be treated equally by the US. [1]Never forgive, never forget
- panarky 8y ago
  Grim trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Tit for tat is a great model in pre-school. Both practical experience and game theory show it's a reasonably good approach in quite a lot of situations beyond preschool, and a lot more effective than the kind of abject surrender you propose in promoting desired behavioral changes in other parties.
dontbenebby 8y ago
>If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place. Maybe a better analogy would be if the EU said people from New York State disproportionately overstay and will need a visa.
tialaramex 8y ago
Tit for Tat is how all relationships between sovereign entities work in practice. Too bad. And it is more like the super-rational tit for two tats strategy anyway. The US is _appallingly_ bad at meeting its international obligations, it routinely signs treaties with other countries only to subsequently decide it doesn't fancy sticking to its side of the bargain but of course it demands they fulfil their end... All countries (including the US) agreed to the Vienna Convention, which says to let the other country know if its citizen gets arrested or hospitalised and requests consular assistance by their people. The US completely ignored this, routinely holding foreigners without an interpreter on the rationale that hey, they aren't _citizens_ so they don't have rights... And hey, how we were supposed to know that he was saying he wants consular assistance, he said he wanted to talk to his family, and we said "No" but we never refused consular assistance... The US Supreme Court decided that if US police do this it's just fine. No civil rights violation. Sure, the foreigner had "rights", but if police prevent them exercising those rights? Eh, whatever, they are American police, and Americans come first... "My country, right or wrong, my country" yeah? So lots of countries that the US is supposedly friends with signed an additional treaty with the US which basically says OK, fine, even if our citizen doesn't make it clear that they need consular assistance, tell us immediately anyway. Are you guessing that the US complied and now it's fine? Of course not. Now the US routinely says that it tried to contact consular services but alas other operational priorities meant it took a few days to get around to it... [ Back when it was her job, Hilary Clinton struggled to get ordinary Americans who ultimately are responsible for implementing these rules to understand Tit for Tat. You beat up the "weird foreign guy acting strange" and lock him in a jail cell for a week "to teach him a lesson". Now how are the US consular team supposed to persuade a Parisian genndarme to let some American idiot get on a plane home instead of leaving him to rot for starting a drunken fight in a restaurant? ] Your country treats other countries badly. Under the circumstances I think they've been exceedingly nice about it and I think it's more than time the EU threw the book at the US.
falcor84 8y ago
> Policy should be set based on the reality on the ground and not merely policital fantasy. I fail to understand what you mean here; aren't these two things the same? The way I see it, politics is exactly the practice of coming up with fantasies that larger groups are willing to accept as reality.
KorematsuFred 8y ago
You are making the mistake of thinking US immigration/visa laws have anything to do with sensible policy. In fact in USA any system that is 100% under government control tends to be more communist and Quixotic than Soviets. There is more of racist Congress at play rather than anything related to overstays. Now consider overstay numbers (total overstay vs % of total travelers from that country): Canada - 120K (.11%) Mexico - 47K (1.73%) UK - 25K (0.39%) India - 17K (1.32%) Italy - 16K (0.83%) Bulgaria - 300 (1.3%) Cyprus - 61 (0.69%) Poland - 2400 (1.3%) Romania - 1300 (1.4%) Entire Europe - 126K Entire Asia - 56K None of those numbers are significantly different, in fact when people know that they can reenter easily the high chances are they leave more easily. It is a bit like those H1B try to hang to their jobs but those on green card travel all around the world and quit all the time too.

by zaroth 8y ago

sorokod 8y ago

Tit for tat is an effective strategy for Prisoner's dilemma : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...

ketzu 8y ago

Tit for tat is, as far as I know, very common in diplomatic relationships between countries. The EU wants it's citenzens treated the same, the way you phrased it already accepts that it's the case for the US. The equivalent would be more: "If travelers from any state of the US are overstaying in the EU, I would expect travelers from that US State to need a visa." Would you still appreciate that? (This is a genuine question not hyperbole.)

jkaplowitz 8y ago

Due to the nature of the Schengen area and the greater independence of an EU member state compared to a US state, there's no real way to track whether a US citizen overstays more in some parts of the Schengen area than others. And I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that at least some of the EU member states in question are on track to join Schengen before the time ETIAS launches in 2021.

virtualwhys 8y ago
> there's no real way to track whether a US citizen overstays more in some parts of the Schengen area than others. Doesn't matter, it's 90 days applied to the entire Schengen area, regardless of which member state(s) you visited.
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  Yes, but the person I was responding to found it relevant whether Americans are more likely to overstay in particular EU countries such as the ones on which the US imposes visa requirements. The only possible tracking (for short-term entries) is at the Schengen level, as you say; the US does not require visas from most Schengen nationals. But the US does require ESTA+VWP from them if they don't seek a visa, and this is basically analogous to ETIAS.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  But (for now), there isn’t always a passport-control between Schengen and non-Schengen zones. E.g. your time in Monaco, Andorra or Ireland. Dunno if your time in Ireland is kept track of or not if you fly to/from it.
jkaplowitz 8y ago
Self-replying to note that one of the EU member states on which the US imposes visa requirements, Poland, is already in Schengen. (Edit window has passed.)

tapland 8y ago

> If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place. You mean US citizens from particular states? Because that's what the equivalent would be.

IshKebab 8y ago
Not really. States are not countries.
- askmike 8y ago
  Why does that matter? There are huge differences culturally and socioeconomically between different states (and even areas). States have very different laws with a "federal government" managing it all. I don't see how it's very different from EU member states and the EU in Brussel managing it all.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    There are a few ways it's very different. First is that the US has a national standard process for obtaining a passport that applies regardless of what state you're in. That is not the case for the EU. Second, not all EU member countries are parties to all the same treaties, again, unlike the US. Third, each EU country has its own domestic and international policy, restricted that may be as regards to international agreements on production. Fourth, as it is possible for a member state to enter or leave the EU, unlike the US, having a treaty with the EU as a whole makes the United States bound to potential new members that it did not have the opportunity to individually evaluate.
    - benj111 8y ago
      "potential new members that it did not have the opportunity to individually evaluate" Theres nothing stopping the US adding a state.
      - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

learc83 8y ago

If people from Hawaii were overstaying in Japan, the US wouldn't be fine with Japan requiring visas for residents of Hawaii. Part of the purpose of the EU is to present a united front when dealing with other countries. Collective bargaining doesn't work if you don't act collectively. >If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries. The only way to do this would be to require Visas to the whole EU because of the lack of internal border controls (for most of the EU).

SllX 8y ago
Hawaii isn’t a sovereign nation with its own foreign service.
- r00fus 8y ago
  It’s an analogy as Hawaii is one of the 50 United States. The EU Schengen zone is similar to the US as there is free travel between countries within the zone.
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    And even beyond that the EU states all (by EU regulation) willingly stand in for each other when it comes to their citizens in foreign countries. If you're from a big country like France or Germany, you don't notice, but if you're from a smaller country like Portugal this means when you realise your country does not even have consular facilities in the random place you're visiting, you don't worry, the French or Germans do and you're an EU citizen, so they'll sub for your own consular officials as needed.
    - lisper 8y ago
      The difference is that U.S. passports don't distinguish which state you are a citizen of. Hawaii does not have its own representative in the United Nations. Hawaii does not have its own ambassadors and consulates. EU passports do distinguish which country you are a citizen of. Each EU country has its own representative in the U.N. and its own ambassadors and consulates [1]. Free travel is not the feature that is legally indicative of a nation. [1] Yes, I know that EU consulates can be shared by other EU citizens. Nonetheless, legally there is no such thing as "an EU consulate" or "an ambassador from the EU" or a generic EU passport. It really is a radically different model from the EU. (The most notable difference is that countries can unilaterally withdraw from the EU without triggering a civil war within the EU. States can't.)

PunchTornado 8y ago

are you ok with EU imposing visas for some US states and not for others?

ajmurmann 8y ago
I'm more than OK with that. Especially given that I have a pretty good idea what state Europeans are more likely to have a critical opinion of.
erentz 8y ago
How would they do that given US states do not have citizens or passports?
- toast0 8y ago
  Use state of birth, if it's encoded on the passports, and if not, require a visa from everyone until state of birth is encoded on the passports. As a point of order, US states do have citizens. As a US citizen, I'm also a citizen of the state in which I reside.
  - virtualwhys 8y ago
    You're a resident of the state in which you reside. I have never heard anyone say, for example, "I am a citizen of the state of Massachusetts". That you can move to another state and claim residency there implies what residency is, transient, whereas citizenship is permanent.
    - toast0 8y ago
      The fourteenth amendment states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
  - erentz 8y ago
    So someone born in Morocco who moved to France and became a French citizen should be denied visa free entry to the US because their citizenship by your standard is actually Moroccan.

gambiting 8y ago

>>there could be some acknowledgement that travelers from those countries are disproportionately overstayers and there is a justifiable reason to need to more closely track them. That used to be the case for Poland. After the fall of communism it was extremely popular to travel to the US on a tourist visa and stay - the much higher pay and standard of living were generally worth the risk. But nowadays? In 2019? Why the fuck would anyone from Poland do that is beyond me. The pay is hardly any better if at all, plus you risk getting absolutely fucked over if you have to go to a hospital, not to mention that you could be deported at any time. It just makes no sense considering you can hop on a cheap ryanair flight to anywhere else in Europe and get paid much better, have access to guaranteed healthcare, paid holiday/sick leave and all the other rights that we enjoy as EU citizens. US seems to be living in this bubble from 20 years ago where Polish citizens used to overstay their tourist visas massively - but times have changed, and the visa requirements haven't.

rmind 8y ago

Just a few points: - Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality. Regardless whether you think it is pre-school model or not, this is what pretty much all countries do, as it is a perfectly rational way (and sometimes even the only way) to defend your interests. By rational I am talking about the Game Theory kind of rational. :) - You suggest to look at each EU country individually (just also keep in mind that there are no border controls beetween the EU countries in the Schengen Zone). In such case, should we also look at each US state individually (because they are also not uniform, e.g. some are much poorer than the others)? EU as a whole has much greater weight and leverage. The point I am making here is that it is another geopolitical reality: countries use their weight and, for example, US uses its weight to exert its influence pretty much all over the world. Well, so does the EU in this case, whether the US likes it or not. - Your point about the citizens of those countries being disproportionate overstayers is not true. As a matter of fact, the overstay rate of these countries is lower than some of those which are already in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), e.g. compare those fives countries with Spain, Greece, Hungary, etc. So, if there is some kind of threshold they cross, then it should apply to the current VWP countries to, shouldn't it? Please the see offical US Homeland Security report as a reference here: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fiscal-year-2017-entryexit-overstay-report https://www.dhs.gov/publication/fiscal-year-2017-entryexit-o...

TomVDB 8y ago
VISA requirements only for those states that voted a particular way during, say, presidential elections would be comical. Though not too different from imposing trade sanction on those products that hit some states much harder than others.
lisper 8y ago
> Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality. It's also an evolutionarily stable strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
- m463 8y ago
  I learned about it in regard to the prisoner's dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma > Strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma ... > The winning deterministic strategy was tit for tat, which Anatol Rapoport developed and entered into the tournament. It was the simplest of any program entered, containing only four lines of BASIC, and won the contest. The strategy is simply to cooperate on the first iteration of the game; after that, the player does what his or her opponent did on the previous move. Depending on the situation, a slightly better strategy can be "tit for tat with forgiveness". When the opponent defects, on the next move, the player sometimes cooperates anyway, with a small probability (around 1–5%). This allows for occasional recovery from getting trapped in a cycle of defections. The exact probability depends on the line-up of opponents.

barry-cotter 8y ago

Tit for tat is a fantastic model, much like GRIM[1] because it has the advantage of being simple, clear and easily checkable. The EU as an organisation is meant to fight, as one, for its member states’ interests. Easily verified policy makes coordination far, far easier, as does legal and organisational equality. The U.K. expected the EU to throw Ireland under the bus when it came to Brexit and they didn’t because it’s a partnership of nominal equals. For the same reason the EU is extremely strongly motivated to advocate for all its citizens to be treated equally by the US. [1]Never forgive, never forget

panarky 8y ago
Grim trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Tit for tat is a great model in pre-school. Both practical experience and game theory show it's a reasonably good approach in quite a lot of situations beyond preschool, and a lot more effective than the kind of abject surrender you propose in promoting desired behavioral changes in other parties.

dontbenebby 8y ago

>If US travelers are overstaying in any particular EU countries, I would expect and appreciate the same measures would be put in place. Maybe a better analogy would be if the EU said people from New York State disproportionately overstay and will need a visa.

tialaramex 8y ago

Tit for Tat is how all relationships between sovereign entities work in practice. Too bad. And it is more like the super-rational tit for two tats strategy anyway. The US is _appallingly_ bad at meeting its international obligations, it routinely signs treaties with other countries only to subsequently decide it doesn't fancy sticking to its side of the bargain but of course it demands they fulfil their end... All countries (including the US) agreed to the Vienna Convention, which says to let the other country know if its citizen gets arrested or hospitalised and requests consular assistance by their people. The US completely ignored this, routinely holding foreigners without an interpreter on the rationale that hey, they aren't _citizens_ so they don't have rights... And hey, how we were supposed to know that he was saying he wants consular assistance, he said he wanted to talk to his family, and we said "No" but we never refused consular assistance... The US Supreme Court decided that if US police do this it's just fine. No civil rights violation. Sure, the foreigner had "rights", but if police prevent them exercising those rights? Eh, whatever, they are American police, and Americans come first... "My country, right or wrong, my country" yeah? So lots of countries that the US is supposedly friends with signed an additional treaty with the US which basically says OK, fine, even if our citizen doesn't make it clear that they need consular assistance, tell us immediately anyway. Are you guessing that the US complied and now it's fine? Of course not. Now the US routinely says that it tried to contact consular services but alas other operational priorities meant it took a few days to get around to it... [ Back when it was her job, Hilary Clinton struggled to get ordinary Americans who ultimately are responsible for implementing these rules to understand Tit for Tat. You beat up the "weird foreign guy acting strange" and lock him in a jail cell for a week "to teach him a lesson". Now how are the US consular team supposed to persuade a Parisian genndarme to let some American idiot get on a plane home instead of leaving him to rot for starting a drunken fight in a restaurant? ] Your country treats other countries badly. Under the circumstances I think they've been exceedingly nice about it and I think it's more than time the EU threw the book at the US.

falcor84 8y ago

> Policy should be set based on the reality on the ground and not merely policital fantasy. I fail to understand what you mean here; aren't these two things the same? The way I see it, politics is exactly the practice of coming up with fantasies that larger groups are willing to accept as reality.

KorematsuFred 8y ago

You are making the mistake of thinking US immigration/visa laws have anything to do with sensible policy. In fact in USA any system that is 100% under government control tends to be more communist and Quixotic than Soviets. There is more of racist Congress at play rather than anything related to overstays. Now consider overstay numbers (total overstay vs % of total travelers from that country): Canada - 120K (.11%) Mexico - 47K (1.73%) UK - 25K (0.39%) India - 17K (1.32%) Italy - 16K (0.83%) Bulgaria - 300 (1.3%) Cyprus - 61 (0.69%) Poland - 2400 (1.3%) Romania - 1300 (1.4%) Entire Europe - 126K Entire Asia - 56K None of those numbers are significantly different, in fact when people know that they can reenter easily the high chances are they leave more easily. It is a bit like those H1B try to hang to their jobs but those on green card travel all around the world and quit all the time too.