One of the most ambitious bets of the government of President Gustavo Petro in terms of foreign policy has been to try to stop the United States from asking Colombian tourists for visas to enter that country.
The intentions of the Colombian government were made explicit when the Foreign Ministry confirmed that it had begun to process the request in October of last year.
However, it is a long-term effort and only until March of this year was the first technical meeting to deal with the issue confirmed. The meeting was attended by several senior Colombian government officials, such as the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Coy, and the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Luis Gilberto Murillo.
The Executive’s strategy is to get the United States to give them a visa waiver called visa waiver. This relaxation of the rule would allow Colombian citizens to enter US territory without a visa, as long as specific requirements are met: on the one hand, they would have to make tourism or business trips and, on the other, they would have to remain in the United States for a maximum period of 90 days.
It is, however, a difficult achievement to achieve. more, because It is not the first time that a Colombian government seeks to eliminate the visa for tourists traveling to the United States. Already in 2014, during the government of former President Juan Manuel Santos, the country had tried to adjust its immigration policy, but it was unsuccessful.
At the regional level it is also clear that this is a difficult issue to achieve. In Latin America, Chile is the only country that has the possibility for its citizens to make tourist or business trips to the United States without the need for a visa.
It is worth saying that the list of countries that have this possibility is very small. So much so that they fit in a single paragraph.
Among those exempted are: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Republic of Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
This is what Colombia has to do before getting the waiver visa
This time, however, the Colombian government has faith and the requirements that the US government is asking for are already clear.
As pointed out by the Colombian Foreign Ministry itself, The Biden administration has put on the table five key issues that Colombia must address before achieving the visa waiver for its citizens.
Among other things, they have cited the need to implement counterterrorism actions, law enforcement, traveler detection, proper application of US immigration law, and proper handling of identity and travel documents for Colombian citizens. seeking to leave the country.
On the other hand, some senior US government officials have hinted at the actions that the Colombian government would have to implement to achieve visa waiver.
In an interview with WEEK that took place last year, the United States ambassador to Colombia, Francisco Palmieri, maintained that the process of making migration more flexible could take time, but did not rule out that it could be successful. “Everything is possible,” Palmieri said.
He pointed out that withdrawing the visa process is not the only action that can be carried out bilaterally to improve the migratory situation of Colombians. To that extent, he warned that “conditions of trust” must be created to guarantee the proper movement of people between the two countries.