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-o...

> Tit-for-tat response is a geopolitical reality.

It's also an evolutionarily stable strategy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy

I learned about it in regard to the prisoner's 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.

> 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)

With VWP there is hardly any filtering of potential overstays so the rates might be higher than those through the visa process.

Also in this specific case it is a very sensible strategy too. The whole reason why Poland, Cyprus etc are in EU is because they think they will get better treatment as part of that larger group. If EU is not going stick its neck out for these countries then these countries should not be in EU at all.

Also, it is perfectly fair because USA is dealing with entire EU here and hence can not treat Poland or Cyprus any differently than France or Germany because the stakes are exactly the same.

A more sensible policy should have been to publish the overstay rates every year and use that to determine VWP for the next fiscal year.

As a citizen of EU country: yes I want every country to be looked at individually. EU members, unlike U.S. states are sovereign entities and I don’t want anyone to mistake EU for a single country (as Americans often do).

> 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

US states have no foreign relations. There's no Californian embassy in Sofia, but there is a Bulgarian embassy in Washington. No American travels on a Californian passport, but Bulgarians travel on Bulgarian passports.

If you want foreign countries to treat the EU as a single diplomatic unit, then all the EU member-state embassies should probably be closed and replaced with EU embassies, and all member-state passports should be replaced with generic EU passports.

Why? The EU and its member states are free to organize themselves any way they see fit, and states can decide on collective action, see NATO article 5.

The US is also free to organize its policies as it sees fit. If the EU really doesn't want the US to treat its member states as diplomatically separate entities, due to treaties the US was not party to, then it should stop holding them out as separate entities and present an unambiguously unified front.

As a practical matter, no country could subject citizens of different EU member states to different visa policies if they all had identical passports. That's exactly the situation with American passports.

> The US is also free to organize its policies as it sees fit.

Yep. And then you get disagreements and tit-for-tat. Just don't claim that the US's policies are in some way more legitimate.

> then it should stop holding

Says who? On whose authority? If the US wants its citizens to be treated uniformly, then it shouldn't give out per-state driver's licenses.

> Says who? On whose authority?

The authority or reasonableness and practicality.

> If the US wants its citizens to be treated uniformly, then it shouldn't give out per-state driver's licenses.

It may be news to you, but those aren't travel documents and are nonstandardized to boot. But if you think the EU should wade into that mess, I guess you're entitled to your opinion.

Also, it's probably worth noting treating Americans as citizens of their state and not the US for immigration purposes is totally unprecedented in the modern era of passports. On the other hand, the precedent over the same period has been to treat Europeans as citizens of their member states and not of an undifferentiated EU.

> EU member-state embassies should probably be closed and replaced with EU embassies

It's fairly close to how it works. If you live in Montenegro and need any EU visa, you go to Slovenian embassy. Even if you'll visit Spain or Ireland.

The United States of America is a entity comprised of several states, each one with it's own constitution and judicial court, while there is a central government with it's own constitution and juridical court.

So does the European Union.

You are splitting hairs. As the other commenter said there is no formal foreign relationships between a US state and other nations. I cannot travel on a California passport. No US state has a seat in the UN, but the individual members of the EU do. I am not saying the EU is not correct for this change, but your argument does not hold up at all.

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.

Really great animated illustration of tit-for-tat vs. other strategies: https://ncase.me/trust/

> Really great animated illustration of tit-for-tat vs. other strategies: https://ncase.me/trust/

Thanks for sharing! Probably the best explanation of classic game theory that I have seen.

> 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)?

It's not the same. When you are born in California, your citizenship is "US". When you are born in Bulgaria, your citizenship is Bulgarian, not European. If that happens, of course it'll be more difficult to prevent people from a single country to move freely.

This is one of the biggest differences between United States and EU. USA is one country, Europe is not.

> 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.

I am European, however this comment makes me laugh. USA can literally crash EU in a couple of weeks, if they want to. It doesn't mean I need to live with fear, for God's sake, but just saying.

This answer from the EU is just a show off, utterly useless, and obviously being two months before the elections it tells me something - we want to protect our borders from the USA? Finally we won't have anymore terrorists coming from USA. Thanks EU, I feel safer now. :)

> I am European, however this comment makes me laugh. USA can literally crash EU in a couple of weeks, if they want to. It doesn't mean I need to live with fear, for God's sake, but just saying.

That's maybe what the US believes (or some of the "America is special" hardliners) and if you believe it too I would say their propaganda did a good job. They can neither militarily nor economically do this, even if they wish they could.

> That's maybe what the US believes (or some of the "America is special" hardliners) and if you believe it too I would say their propaganda did a good job. They can neither militarily nor economically do this, even if they wish they could.

Says who?

You don't need to crash a country just by throwing bombs at them. Just look at how dysfunctional the EU is.

> It's not the same. When you are born in California, your citizenship is "US". When you are born in Bulgaria, your citizenship is Bulgarian, not European. If that happens, of course it'll be more difficult to prevent people from a single country to move freely.

Not exactly. As already explained in some posts below, the EU has a legal concept of "EU citizenship". So, from the legal point of view, Bulgarians in your example are both the Bulgarian citizens and EU citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Un...

> This is one of the biggest differences between United States and EU. USA is one country, Europe is not.

Sure, but how relevant is that? At least in this case, I think the difference is more of a technicality.

By the way, EU is already more than a confederation, since it actually has many properties of federation (for example, if you will compare the political systems of EU and Switzerland, you will actually find quite a few key similarities). Although European politicians do everything they can to avoid these words. So, while EU is certainly not a country, it made quite a lot of steps towards becoming one. It's just a fact, regardless whether you are pro-federation or anti-federation.

> I am European, however this comment makes me laugh. USA can literally crash EU in a couple of weeks, if they want to.

.. inflicting huge damage to itself with very major repercussions to the US national security. This world is really not as simple as that. Is US much more powerful than the EU? Yeah, sure. Although even in terms of raw power it's not as dramatic (economy: EU is already of very similar weight as US in terms of GDP; military: combined EU forces would be very comfortably the second largest military in the world, both in terms of quality and quantity). Anyway, this is rather theorethic. There are many more complex aspects which matter in reality with a very subtle palance of powers, so "they can crash us" doesn't mean much.

> This answer from the EU is just a show off, utterly useless, and obviously being two months before the elections it tells me something - we want to protect our borders from the USA? Finally we won't have anymore terrorists coming from USA. Thanks EU, I feel safer now. :)

This was actually planned and made public years ago, at least as far as 2016, so nothing to do with the elections. As pointed out by others, it is not targeted explictly at the US. It's something what's going to be applicable for many other countries.

Rent a car. EU countries dont even treat each other equally.

Stones in glass houses ?

Territorial restrictions The vehicle selection can restrict travel to certain countries. For a description of these restrictions on admission, the countries are divided into three zones.

Zone 1: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and Vatican

Zone 2: Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia

Zone 3: All countries which are not in zone 1 or 2.

Jaguar, Maserati, Land Rover and Porsche cars as well as all luxury cars may enter only in Zone 1 countries. Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen cars up to group L are allowed to enter only in Zone 1 countries as well as Poland and the Czech Republic, while X* cars are only allowed to enter in Zone 1 countries. Vehicles of all other brands may enter only in the zones 1 and 2.

Trucks, vans, people carriers and minibuses of all brands may only be driven in zones 1 and 2.

Entry into any country in zone 3 is not permitted.

In case of offence against cross border and territorial restrictions all insurances lose their validity.

Sounds like this is a rental car/insurance issue, i.e. private corporation, not a free movement issue. Whether it's just or not is a different question, which would derail the thread.

Point being it is obvious there are different regions having issues in the EU.

The car rental places dont want you to take their nice cars to countries that have a higher rate of car theft.

Pretending all of the EU is equal is silly.

It's not unlike renting a car in San Diego and not being allowed to take it into Mexico. The risk of theft is higher than the wish to deal with and the reality of successful prosecution/recovery is incredibly low. Rent a car in Germany and you are specifically told what countries you can't visit without higher rates or lower class of car.

I’ve rented a car in Montreal on several occasions in early 2000s and my contract explicitly forbid me to enter the Bronx and Queens boroughs of New York City.

Yet it is all of the EU we are discussing. Either each country is treated differently or it isnt.

No flip flopping

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).

In that case there should be no such thing as a Croatian passport or a Polish passport. Or Croatian citizenship (etc.). Feels like there’s a fair bit of eating cake and having it too going on here.

Replace “passport” by “driving license” and things are almost equivalent: a piece of paper that pins you down a particular plot of land.

You’re not getting the point. The USA is a single country. All of its citizens are to be treated equally. And all of its foreign affairs are handled by the one federal government. The EU is a very complicated collection of many individual countries that all have their own citizens, and all represent themselves individually in foreign affairs except where it’s convenient to represent themselves as a group. Free movement in the EU doesn’t even extend to all member countries.

There is no reasonable way Japan could refuse entry to a US citizens who are suspected of residing in a state without effectively denying all US citizens because there is only one type of US citizen. (Which they are free to do, but obviously won’t.)

On the other hand residents of the EU have it in the reverse. There are 28 (?) different types of citizens, each with different passports, each from countries with different immigration departments, different foreign affairs ministers, etc.

It’s asking a lot for other countries to just blanket accept all of these types of citizens from very different countries, and more to just accept them from any new country that may be added. Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU. It’s entirely feasible some member country like Hungry (to pick on one) begins to behave badly or becomes a dictatorship or starts persecuting people and the expectation is still we must accept their passports the same as a French one? Absurd. Of course not. The EU is a long way from being a single country.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the EU, the European Union, in your post.

> The EU is a very complicated collection of many individual countries that all have their own citizens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_the_European_Un...

As a German, I'm a citizen of Germany and a citizen of the EU.

> Free movement in the EU doesn’t even extend to all member countries

Sure it does. It does even extend to a few countries outside the EU.

> different types of citizens

They are all EU citizens. All of them have the right of free movement within the EU. Many of them are also in the Schengen area (which has 400 Million people), which got rid of internal border controls and which has a common Visa policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_the_Schengen_Ar...

> Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU.

It never came close to being in the EU. There have been talks since 2005 with not much progress. Turkey would need to fully comply with EU laws and regulations. That's a process which could need another decade. Then the EU countries would need to vote in favor. Every single one of them. That's not clear how that would be achievable. If Turkey would be a dictatorship, then there would be zero chance of Turkey becoming a member of the EU.

> Hungry

Hungary?

> You’re not getting the point.

Mind that there is also this point: The individual EU-Schengen country doesn't give out visa for their own country. U.S. citizens can only get a Schengen Visa. Thus if the U.S. says "EU Member X requires Visa" country X can't enforce Visa itself the only way X can enforce Visa is by the EU enforcing Visa.

Also the EU is a solidarity agreement - EU member states pledged to stand in for each other at such situations. If EU doesn't uphold it's not fulfilling the promise it gave those countries, when they gave up some souvereignity.

"The USA is a single country. All of its citizens are to be treated equally"

Yes because the US has decided they should be, the EU has decided they want their citizens treating the same also.

I understand your point that you can't differentiate Americans by passport, unlike Europeans, but that's a subtly different argument.

"Turkey is a dictatorship and came damn close to being in the EU" If by damn close you mean informal talks. Theres a list of things nations need to sign up to, be become EU members. Not being a dictatorship is probably in there somewhere.

Just having a passport for a particular country is not the single deciding factor to determine entry. There are already other requirements in many countries that have nothing to do with citizenship. (Think Yellow fever vaccincation in some Asian countries.)

There is absolutely nothing that would prevent Japan or the EU to impose additional differentiating factors to US citizens is deciding entry to their country.

“For safety reason, we require all visitors to have a valid driving license. We only recognize licenses from those states that have less than x driving related deaths per 100,000.”

Absurd from a policy point of view? Of course. Impossible from a legal point of view? Absolutely not.

Hungry?

Oh great. Tons of 2nd generation Canadians and Americans are Polish and Croat citizens by lineage. It’ll probably be illegal for them to apply for an ETIAS, and it’ll take a year to get a PL or HR passport.

Huh? I think you’re confused. A US citizen who happens to be of Croatian or Polish decent is still just a US citizen.

If the EU does build a database of US citizens’ lineage and then starts denying US citizens of Croatian descent entry not only would that be hugely ironic it would also cause a pretty emphatic response from the US.

There is only one US country and only one US citizen.

The argument people are making comparing EU countries to US states is absurd.

They might as well be saying “Well what if the EU decided not to allow visa free entry to New Zealand citizens from the city of Auckland. Huzzah! Therefore US should treat all EU countries the same!”

See how absurd that is? Because a US state has just as much control over immigration and foreign policy or national defense etc etc as does a New Zealand city, which is to say none.

> Huh? I think you’re confused. A US citizen who happens to be of Croatian or Polish decent is still just a US citizen.

Many European countries automatically make people their citizens by lineage, not place of birth. Sometimes with little restriction by the paternal line.

Being born in the US to Croatian parents will make you a citizen of both countries, no application required.

Croatia may not know about it, but you'll still be doing something illegal if such a person applies for an ETIAS and answers "No" to the question about being an EU citizen (which will make you ineligible for an ETIAS).

It would be even messier for them if they were born in Croatia and then immigrated to the US as a child.

That's how the US and Canadian implementations work.

Wow. That sounds like a pretty crazy hole in the ETIAS plan, and your comment belongs more appropriately as a child of the original's in regard to the following:

> - There is a separate dispute between EU and US, because US imposes visas on five EU states (Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Romania and Cyprus). According the EU law, all EU countries should be treated equally or otherwise reciprocal measures should apply. There have been calls within the EU to respond tit for tat and impose EU visas on US citizens, if the issue does not get resolved soon.

So in the dispute above that is being hotly debated, Croatians (for example) want the EU to enforce visa free entry to the US as reciprocation for the visa free entry to the EU. But according to what you say, now US citizens who happen to be of Croatian descent don't have visa free entry to the EU and must get a Croatian passport.

That's how I'm assuming how ETIAS will be implemented: you're usually not eligible for visa-free travel if you're already a citizen. In the past, border police never really cared if you tried to enter EU on your Canadian passport, even if it says you were born in Italy with an obviously Italian name.

But if it's the machine that's deciding these things based on the letter of the law, you might have a problem.

Maybe ETIAS will have a bigger carve-out for these situations than the US and Canada (which exempt eachothers' citizens). Or maybe they won't.

> In the past, border police never really cared if you tried to enter EU on your Canadian passport, even if it says you were born in Italy with an obviously Italian name.

Wouldn't that be an unreliable test, since you could've renounced your citizenship or have been born to Canadian parents visiting Italy, since Italy is jus sanguinis [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_nationality_law

Correct, but the point was the border police never bothered to inquire. Even the US let’s you renounce your jus soli citizenship.

Now you may have to state Yes/No to a question about other citizenships, when the best answer for a lot of Americans (a nation of immigrants) will be “Don’t know for sure, maybe”.

> Many European countries automatically make people their citizens by lineage, not place of birth.

Automatically?

Source?

The general concept is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis

Croatia: http://eudo-citizenship.eu/NationalDB/docs/CRO%20Law%20on%20...

Section 4: "A child acquires Croatian citizenship by origin: [various criteria about who your parents are]" There's no "may" or "can".

Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Descent...

"A person born of a parent with German citizenship at the time of the child's birth is a German citizen. Place of birth is not a factor in citizenship determination based on parentage."

Italy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_nationality_law#Attrib...

"Italian citizenship is granted by birth through the paternal line, with no limit on the number of generations, or through the maternal line for individuals born after 1 January 1948."

France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_nationality_law#French_...

"French citizenship by birth abroad to at least one French citizen The child (legitimate or natural) is French if at least one parent is French."

Some countries (like France) require the birth to be registered, while others do not.

There are literally tens of millions of Americans that are Italian citizens, from their grandfather or great-grandfather, without knowing it.

There are also cases where a US-born may be eligible for other citizenship but must apply. (Ireland, for example, if either parent was Irish.)

Hawaii isn’t a sovereign nation with its own foreign service.

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.

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.

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.)

I know but it doesn’t work.

Every single EU member state is a sovereign nation with its own foreign policy, military, standing to sign treaties, seat in the UN General Assembly, international recognition beyond the UN, and a couple of them even have permanent seats in the Security Council. And most, but not all are parties to the Schengan Area, and most, but not all, are members of NATO. The ones that are not landlocked even get to set their own maritime boundaries, whereas past a certain point in the US, the maritime boundaries here are Federal territory. EU member states still maintain formal diplomatic relations among themselves and with other nations, and issue passports and visas. They might have standardized their passports, sure, but they are still issued by the member states.

Hawaii has none of that, it is a US State. Once you’re a US State, you don’t stop being one, ever, and we fought a civil war over this. That clearly isn’t the case with the EU, as demonstrated by Brexit.

In short, the analogy doesn’t work because it isn’t analogous. The EU wants to be treated like the US in some cases and like separate nations in other cases. The US is just the US as far as other nations have to be concerned, and there isn’t a Hawaiian or Californian or Texan passport that other nations can granularly accept or reject, just American ones.

If you want something more analogous to the Japanese hypothetically rejecting Hawaiians, it would be like the US allowing Visa-free entry from all of Germany except people from Brandenburg, or all of Australia except people from Victoria, or all of Japan except people from Okinawa. As far as the 4 EU States without Visa-free access to the US are concerned, they have normal diplomatic channels available to them.

EDIT: Edited for grammar and clarity. Sorry about that, quite a few interruptions in the last few minutes.

What you are missing is that you seem to think that because the US is organised in a particular fashion, that is the only valid organisational structure. The EU is organised differently, and it and its member countries are perfectly within their rights to organise themselves in this fashion.

If you find that difficult, just rephrase "the EU has" into "the EU member states have". So: the EU member states have decided on collective visa measures.

Collective response is something states do. See NATO Article 5.

What you seem to be missing is that the EU is an organization that legally owes its existence to a series of treaties between 28 sovereign nations and the United States is one, single, sovereign nation under International law. This system of nations is really a post-Napoleon phenomenon and wasn’t solidified until after World War 2. If it had gone a different direction, maybe every American, German, Brazilian and Australian State and every Swiss canton and every Russian oblast would be organized in a manner much like the EU and issue their own passports.

It isn’t a mere organizing principle, there is a legal distinction that is easily drawn with differing legal trappings.

The EU deciding on collective Visa measures is fine, I actually have not taken any issue with that in this entire thread, the only thing I took issue with was a bad analogy which left alone, only confuses and misleads otherwise constructive discussion.

Long and the short of it is: Hawaii and Croatia aren’t analogous to each other vis a vis visa agreements, and that’s because they come from differing International legal positions, a position in which Hawaii is actually irrelevant from beginning to end and Croatia isn’t but has the legal standing and recognition to temporarily be irrelevant in its own visa policies if it chooses to. The nuances are not unimportant.

You are still missing the point that these are fairly arbitrary distinctions. The states of the US are actually quite independent, with much of the authority of the federal government being taken from the 'commerce clause', which is ... er ... "interesting" (and actually not that dissimilar to the EU deriving from the single market and customs union).

Case in point: I have an EU driver's license. It is valid in the EU. When in the US, driver's licenses are per-state, though I am allowed to drive in a different state for a while, I have to get the current state's license when I move my residence. California has border checks for agricultural goods. etc. etc.

These distinctions are only as arbitrary as the law, which can be very arbitrary but ultimately we have agreed to accept the Rule of Law, both my country and most likely yours.

Nations have agreed to fairly consistent diplomatic protocols and channels with which to treat each other. Hawaii can’t issue visas, but Japan can require Americans to apply for a visa. That isn’t just a stretch of the Commerce Clause, it is part of how and why the US Constitution was written the way it was: so individual States weren’t forming international interests contrary to the national interest.

Thank you!! Why does this seem so difficult for some to understand?

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.)

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.

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

Grim trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_trigger

> 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.

EU member states are sovereign countries, or at least that’s the pretense. It’s not equivalent.

US states are also sovereign entities, or at least that's the pretense.

States have never had separate sovereignty in international affairs.

> States have never had separate sovereignty in international affairs.

And yet their separate sovereignty, allegedly restricted to “domestic” affairs, is why the US, through it's court system, allows US states to ignore US international commitments (notably, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations) in their execution of their criminal law.

No, that is not why. It's because the US has two policies, domestic and international, and the application of treaties on domestic law is up to the federal government to execute. If the Congress chooses not to do so, there isn't a domestic law broken and so the states aren't bound.

So actually, if they had separate sovereignty, the states would have to sign the treaties themselves and would potentially be more bound to them, not less.

No, the United States formally withdrew from the Optional Protocol to the Convention concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes 14 years ago. The cases alluded to in the parent comment (Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, Medellin v. Texas) came after the US withdrawal from the Optional Protocol.

Not really. States are not countries.

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.

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.

"potential new members that it did not have the opportunity to individually evaluate"

Theres nothing stopping the US adding a state.

Sure, but if that occurs the state is now no longer an individual and can never leave. States in the US are not individually parties to any agreements with other countries, so the treaty would have no additional members.

The same thing applies if belgium decides to conquer a few more miles of land. You can leave the EU, no state leaves the USA.

If a state wanted to leave the US it could. The US doesn't have an article 50, but if Texas declared independence, the rest of the US could choose to respect that. Of course the US could decide to send in the troops, but the EU could send the troops to the UK. There might be technical legal differences between the two examples, but at this level its more might is right and the winner writes the rules. Example The Ukraine.

Whether a leaving EU party would remain part of a treaty would depend on whether it was individually named. The UK for example is having to negotiate all trade deals anew as current ones are EU only.

No, a state can't leave legally. There was a theoretical framework that would allow it in the Constitution, but that was decided 150 years ago. The EU has an explicit legal avenue for leaving.

Also, no; the EU cannot send troops to the UK. Individual member states could do so, but not the EU. That may change in the future but at the moment it is how it is.

I don't understand the Ukraine reference; in context it seems like you are saying they tried to leave the EU and the EU sent in troops, but that didn't happen. Could you elaborate?

The Ukraine reference was referring to Russia annexing part of it, and the rest of the world doing nothing.

As I said there might be technical legal differences, but practically speaking at this level they can be ignored. If Texas wants independence, it isn't going to be put off by US laws. The US will loudly point to those laws yes, but whether it does anything will be independent of those laws.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.)

>>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.

> 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.

Tit for tat is an effective strategy for Prisoner's dilemma :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#The_itera...

>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.

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.

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

How would they do that given US states do not have citizens or passports?

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.

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.

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."

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.

It's what US already does for immigrant visas (referred to as "country of chargeability"), so there is precedent.

If that birth was before 1994, that person has French citizenship anyway, if a parent was born before Moroccan Independence.

You are a resident, not citizen of your state. Citizenship as defined means being a member of a country. Passport and visa regimes are based on that.

Passport and Visa regimes are often based on citizenship or place of birth in addition to passport origin.

Also, the fourteenth amendment says "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."

I stand corrected on the internal us terminology. But the dictionary definition of citizenship refers to country. Do you have one example of a visa regime which differentiates between different locations within a country?

Here's are a couple articles about China's special visa practices for people from the Jammu and Kashmir region of India in 2009. [1] [2] I wasn't aware of this contemporaneously, so I don't know quite what it was about, but it sounds like if you were from Jammu and Kashmir, your visa would be issued as a paper visa, and if you were from the rest of India, it would be issued as a stamp. A quick look at sample US passports indicates place of birth including state, so it would be feasible to implement.

My dictionary [3] has many definitions for citizen, none of which are very specific about being ascribed to a country, although the example does use a country:

> 1 : an inhabitant of a city or town especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman

> 2a : a member of a state

> b : a native or naturalized person who owes allegiance to a government and is entitled to protection from it

> // She was an American citizen but lived most of her life abroad.

> 3 : a civilian as distinguished from a specialized servant of the state

> // Soldiers were sent to protect the citizens.

[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigratio...

[2] http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/10/02/why-is-china-issui...

[3] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/citizen

I was pretty sure China would be the example that would show up. Not a great example to emulate.

The term state in that context means country, which is why citizen is a synonym for national. in the Oxford English Dictionary, that is the first definition, and secondarily (and more historically than anything) it refers to citizens of a town. It might be in use locally, but I have never heard anyone use the term citizen in that way other than poetically, and I have spent time in a number of English speaking regions.

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.