Isn't the Visa Waiver Program racist in favor of White nations?
http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/withou...
Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
Isn't it odd that all of these countries are European/White and get a free pass,
while the rest of the world must apply through harsher standards just to visit, much less immigrate?
Isn't it racist that the Visa Waiver Program is almost entirely for Whites?
Answer:
i think so!!! but life isnt fair
No.
Well, the program is not facially discriminatory, because the requirements for qualifying as a waiver country do not mention race at all. The first requirement being that the other country grant reciprocal waivers to US citizens traveling.
So, any country that refuses to grant reciprocal status, or meets any of the other objective criteria (see first link) would not meet the objective standards. And none of those standards are race-based.
The "other factors" does potentially leave room for countries to be excluded by discretion, thus making it possible that as implemented the program has a discriminatory impact.
But before you start claiming racial bias, it's worth checking whether many of the countries you're concerned about were able to meet the simple objective criteria.
Although I've answered many questions on race and immigration policies, on this one I've got to say NO it isn't racist.
The criteria for a country to benefit from the visa waiver program is standardized and mutually agreed upon between the US and those countries.
Any country can join if they choose but not many want to because depending on the country, having a visa waiver may actually have negative effects on that country's' tourism and immigration policies.
I mean the waiver goes both ways and not many countries want to be "flooded" with US citizens.
I think it all comes down to dollars and cents.
Not for anything, but.........
Its actually VERY hard for people from European countries to get a work visa to the US. Check out the immigration reform laws of 1965 (Ted Kennedy). I'll NEVER understand why the illegal Irish champion this guy.
Americans and Europeans can go to almost any country without a visa , while it is not reciprocal in most 3rd world country's , first , they know that 99%of Americans and Europeans are going Togo home after they visit, that is not true with 3rd world citizens coming to America and Europe
they find it so much better they want to stay, there fore with out visas our country's would be over run with 3rd world people, it is bad enough now don't you think?
No. Just because the results appear to be racially discriminatory the program isn't. Why look at the countries on the basis of the racial composition of the population? Look at wealth the countries you so listed are wealthy. You will see that all the countries so listed are wealthy. So the visa waver program is a rich country club.
You of course view things through a prism of race. You also destroyed what little credibility you might have had with me because you elected to exclude from your list of countries that participate in the Visa waver program three countries: Japan, Singapore and Brunei. Japanese, Chinese and Malay populations. Hardly white.
For countries to be able to participate in the visa waver program, they have to establish a track record over several years of compliance with US immigration laws. Only a small percentage of their citizens (I forget how small) can over stay their visas. Illegal immigration from the country has to be vanishingly small.
Carlos Slim Helu's fortune is up almost $20 billion in a year, built amid poverty and resentment in Mexico. Now he's gaining on Warren Buffett.
Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, the industrial titan whose holdings span telecom, banking, energy, tobacco and more, has built unimaginable wealth in one of the poorer countries in the Western Hemisphere. In the past year his fortune, now approaching $50 billion, has grown by $19 billion, an increase that eclipses any gain by any other billionaire in the past decade. He reigns as the third-richest person in the world on the 21st annual FORBES billionaires list. Slim (both his family surname and his nickname) is tantalizingly close to surpassing the wealth of the storied Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) of Omaha, Warren Buffett, the sage investor who has been number two to his protégé and pal, Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )'s Bill Gates, since 2001 .
Slim, 67, amassed his pile in a nation where per capita income is less than $6,800 a year and half the population lives in poverty. His wealth comes to 6.3% of Mexico's annual economic output; if Gates had a similar chunk in the U.S., he'd be worth $784 billion. It's enough to give any populist heartburn.
In Hong Kong, perhaps, or even Finland, Slim would be heralded as a striving champion of capitalism, a self-made billionaire celebrated for employing 218,000 workers and for pushing his country into the modern age. But not in Mexico, where the media and the masses long have held a sneaking suspicion that there is something shady about Slim. He is decried as a rapacious monopolist who built his empire on cozy ties to Mexican presidents and other politicians.
Last year a cartoon in La Reforma, a center-right newspaper, depicted an oversize Slim in a boxing ring, splayed on his back and squashing a tiny opponent. The ring ropes were phone lines, an allusion to Slim's control of Telmex, with a 90% share of the landline phone business, and América Móvil, with a 73% share of the market for cell phone service. The caption: "Billion Dollar Baby." Slim has been pilloried on TV in La Verdad Sea Dicha ("Truth Be Told" ), a political-platform show from a defeated opposition-party candidate for president who had befriended, then betrayed Slim. In one segment a news anchor angrily shoves a pie into the mouth of a papier maché Slim, mocking him as a gluttonous, insatiable tyrant. Never mind that, in 40 years of business in Mexico, Slim isn't known ever to have been formally investigated, indicted, convicted or otherwise sullied in regard to bribery, influence peddling or any other scandal. For some in the working class here--the random cab driver, small-time actor, bellhop--Slim's fat-cat wealth is reason enough for suspicion.
As the best-known patriarch among the ruling families that dominate the Mexican economy, he draws the most fire for the distinctly Mexican form of crony capitalism that pervades the national economy. The cement industry is largely controlled by one player--Cemex (nyse: CX - news - people )--and its billionaire chief, Lorenzo Zambrano. Mexico has two national television networks, run by the country's ruling elite--TV Azteca, run by Ricardo Salinas Pliego; and Grupo Televisa (nyse: TV - news - people ), controlled by Emilio Azcárraga Jean, favorite son of the Azcárraga clan. Even tortillas are a monopoly market, controlled by the González Barrera family's Gruma, which has a 71% share of sales. In January people protested in the streets of Mexico City after tortilla prices doubled.
"Mexico has a dense, intricate web of connections and personal ties between the government and the business class," says Denise Dresser, a Slim basher who teaches political science at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). "This ends up creating a government that doesn't defend the public interest, that isn't willing to go out and regulate in the name of the consumer," she says. "But it is rather willing to help its friends, its allies and, in some cases, its business partners thrive at the expense of the Mexican people."
Slim insists he is unfazed by the criticism. "When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered." At one point in a three-hour interview in his yawning, unadorned office in a three-story building in a tony enclave in Mexico City, he produces prepared talking points to rebut the notion that he is a monopolist. Sample page: "There are actually 44 concessions that offer long distance, 26 for local service and 10 for mobile service.… Telmex is not a company that has monopolistic practices."
Does he protest too much? Some people who know him well say Slim stings from the carping--and that he intends to do something about it. "He's like everyone else. He doesn't like to be criticized. He's a sensitive person who wants to do the right thing," says AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr., who has known Slim since buying a 10% stake in Telmex in 1990 (the $1 billion investment turned into more than $10 billion). "I think he wants to be remembered as someone who did something good for his fellow man," Whitacre says.
Lately Carlos Slim has taken up a particular interest in philanthropy, a pursuit he had neglected for most of the years he was building his businesses. He formed a foundation 23 years ago and funded it with a few million, and it has done little since then. A year ago Slim infused it with $1.8 billion; in the fall he pledged to donate up to $10 billion to the foundation in the next four years to fund health and education programs.
"My new job is to focus on the development and employment of Latin America," he says proudly. Yet even his philanthropic ambitions are greeted with wariness, or outright derision, by some in Slim's home country. ITAM professor Dresser goaded him in a newsweekly commentary for failing to give even more: "The day that you give 80% of your personal fortune to an unselfish cause is the day that I will become your champion." Michael Layton, director of the Philanthropy & Civil Society Project at ITAM, explains: "In Mexico, the perception is that public deeds are done for personal gain."
Click Here for List of Billionaires From Latin America.
More due political affiliation than skin color, wealth, visa waiver reciprocation, and so on.
If a country is 'obedient', then it got a Visa Waiver Program.
That's why 'obedient' countries like Japan, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and so on got a Visa Waiver Program.
And of course, you know what 'disobedient' country is called.
They are in the program because citizens from those countries generally go home when the time comes.
One of the conditions for being a visa waiver country is having a low 'visa failure rate', meaning people return when they are supposed to and don't otherwise violate the terms of their visa. The countries that are on the program do tend to return home, the ones who aren't tend not to.
It has to do with economics, I am sure, but not racism.
We don't want illegal immigrants of any race.
.
The immigration information post by website user , MyTend.com not guarantee correctness