The fact that only citizens of certain EU members States are allowed to travel to the Untied States without a visa, while US citizens travel, visa-free, anywhere within the EU, remains a bone of contention between the US and EU.
While Maltese citizens remain on the list of those requiring visas, US ambassador Molly Bordonaro this week indicated that Maltese would be exempted from requiring a visa for the US only when Malta introduces biometric passports.
The remark, however, represents a departure from the requirements of the so-called US visa-waiver programme, which, among a number of stipulations, requires a “roadmap” country to only have a programme to incorporate biometric identification into their passports, and not to have such passports in issue.
Such biometric information to be held on EU passports, according to European Commission guidelines, will include a microchip on which will be encoded the holder’s identity photograph and, from March 2007, two fingerprints will also be recorded on the passport.
Other requirements, which Malta is said to meet, include a visa refusal rate of less than three per cent, a low rate of visa overstayers from the countries in question, have machine-readable passports, and report the theft of any blank passports to the US authorities in a timely fashion.
While Malta is in the process, along with other EU member States, of introducing such passports, their introduction is, however, long overdue.
A compromise on the long-standing visa issue, which has prompted the European Commission to go so far as to propose a visa requirement for US diplomats visiting the EU, would undoubtedly go down well with the EC.
As matters stand, citizens of the new EU member States, with the exception of Slovenians and with the inclusion of Greeks, need to go through a visa application process in order to visit the US, while American citizens have no such reciprocal visa requirements when visiting the countries in question.
Citizens from 14 “old” EU member States and Slovenia, meanwhile, are entitled to travel to the US without a visa and stay for up to 90 days for either business or pleasure. At the moment, citizens of just 27 countries are allowed entry into the US without a visa requirement.
Not only do Maltese have to apply for visas, a time-consuming ordeal involving lengthy queues outside and inside the US Embassy in Floriana, the modus operandi was recently made even more onerous for Maltese wanting to visit the US.
A new process introduced by the embassy in November necessitates Maltese having first to access an electronic visa application form on the embassy’s website, fill the form in on-line and print it out once completed. They then have to go to a Bank of Valletta branch, pay the visa application fee and collect a receipt of payment. Once done, the applicant proceeds to the embassy with the printed electronic form, the required photograph and the receipt of payment.
___