WASHINGTON, June 28 (UPI) -- South Korea's relationship with the United States merits the country's acceptance to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, experts said Tuesday.
South Korea is America's seventh largest trading partner and has sent 3,600 troops to Iraq.
"You cannot win the war of ideas by telling your friends that they are not equals," said James Jay Carafano, senior research fellow for national security and homeland security with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, told a Heritage meeting Tuesday. He argued that refusing to waive visa requirements for certain countries translated into the message that they were inferior.
The issue may seem minor but it affects South Korean pride, said Balbina Y. Hwang, a policy analyst for northeast Asia with The Heritage Foundation.
The total number of South Korean tourists traveling abroad rose by 27 percent in 2004 over the previous year, Balbina noted, but travel to the United States dropped by five percent.
Twenty-seven countries currently are involved in the visa waiver program with the United States. Nationals of these countries can live in the United States for up to 90 days for business or tourism without a visa. This makes the process of traveling to the United States easier and cheaper, allowing travelers to avoid the visa fee and interview and application process.
In return, countries in the program must agree to reciprocal visa-free travel privileges for Americans and issue machine-readable biometric passports. The nations must have less than three percent of visa applicants refused and pose no threat to national security. South Korea's refusal rate hovers just under 4 percent.
South Korea's consular is the busiest U.S. non-immigrant visa issuing post in the world, processing about 2,000 visas per day. Every one of these requests requires the applicant to travel to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for a face-to-face interview, Carafano said, burdening the South Koreans and straining consular financial and human resources.
Expanding the program would strengthen economic ties by increasing business travel, improving South Koreans' view of Americans, decreasing the cost for applicants, and decreasing the load on the consular, which would allow resources to be allocated to high-risk areas, Carafano said. He argued that allowing more countries to participate would also strengthen security through raising international passport standards and increasing information sharing in relation to passport and visa issuance and monitoring.
"Here we have a visa policy which really isn't providing us much security and it's actually being very detrimental to economic growth," Carafano said.
He argued that the United States is preventing large numbers of people from entering America in the hopes of keeping out a few that will probably enter regardless of if visas are waived or required.
Carafano proposed that the U.S. Congress should allow the secretary of homeland security to waive the 3 percent refusal stipulation if the country is of significant geo-strategic importance, agrees to assist the United States in monitoring terrorist and criminal travel, is working with the United States and regional partners on security and immigration as they relate to international travel, produces a road map to reduce overstays, and uses passports that adhere to U.S. biometric standards.
The country would have 10 years to get its refusal rate under 3 percent, and the United States could revoke membership in the program if the country fails to meet any of the five points mentioned above or poses a security threat to the United States.
In addition to South Korea, Carafano said, countries that would qualify for admittance based on these points were Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Slovak Republic and India, all of which are U.S. allies in the War on Terror and have growing economies.
