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?