After decades of waiting, Poles can visit the US without visas

The symbolic victory, however, comes at a price

On November 11, Poland celebrates its independence day. This year, Poles can also savour another long-awaited liberty, as the country officially joins the United States Visa Waiver Program. 

From Monday, Poles can spend up to 90 days in the US without a visa. Poland is the last Schengen country to qualify, as well as the first new entrant to the scheme in five years.

But much like the choice of date, the diplomatic success is mostly symbolic. The decision was administrative, and some worry that concessions were made to secure the announcement.

A decades-long wait

In the past two decades, speculation about when Poland would join the scheme had become something of a national pastime.

Back in 1991, Poland abolished visa requirements for Americans. When, a decade later, the US had still not reciprocated, Polish politicians began to lobby the White House.

To qualify for the waiver, the rate at which a country’s citizens are refused a US visa has to drop below three percent of applications. In 2006, Poland’s was still well over 25 percent.

Yet many felt that Poland’s support for the Iraq war had earned for the nation the right to be treated the same as Washington’s other European allies. The issue stung national pride and kept resurfacing in various political declarations and during bilateral talks.

“Poles are very pro-American,” Marcin Zaborowski, a senior associate at Visegrad Insight, told Al Jazeera.

“It influences our political decisions, such as participating in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We back the US in the United Nations. We hosted a [US-led] Middle East Summit in February.”

The EU Commission had long applied pressure on the US for being the only country on the EU’s visa-free list which does not grant visa-free travel to all EU citizens. Yet the US remained unmoved – unlike Canada, which, under similar pressure, waived visas for all citizens of the EU in 2008.

A concerted diplomatic push only began in recent years, however. In 2017, refusals still stood at 5.92 percent and had fallen only as far as 3.99 percent in 2018, mostly due to Poles illegally taking up work and overstaying their visas.

LOT Polish Airlines, the country’s flagship carrier, is credited for launching an education campaign about choosing the correct visa type in a bid to cut refusal rates.

According to Dorota Dabrowska-Winterscheid, managing director at the American Chamber of Commerce in Poland, the final impetus came from Georgette Mosbacher, Washington’s ambassador to Warsaw

“[Ambassador Mosbacher] took lead of the issue, and became its face,” she told Al Jazeera. “Perhaps up until now, we were simply missing such a leader.” 

Part of the ambassador’s plan involved persuading Polish businesses to send more official delegations to the US, as a means of lowering the refusal rate.

“During our meetings, she would speak about the problem and ask firms directly,” said Dabrowska-Winterscheid.

Marcin Zaborowski said that state-owned companies were heavily involved, suggesting that Polish tax-payers could end up footing the bill for the corporate diplomacy.

In September, Poland hit 2.76 percent refusals for the 2019 fiscal year, triggering the admissions process. /AlJazeera/