Uruguay signed an agreement with the United States on combating serious crimes that brings it closer to visa exemption

UY Press

Montevideo.-The governments of the United States and Uruguay have taken several steps this year to exempt visas for those traveling to the North American country for tourism or business. In January, the administrations signed an agreement to exchange immigration data and this month a new agreement was reached to prevent serious crimes, which brings Uruguayans closer to the Visa Waiver program.

Uruguay’s Interior Minister Nicolás Martinelli said that this is the “most ambitious agreement” to get closer to the US government’s program, as he wrote on the social network X. The agreement, called Preventing and Combating Serious Crime, “allows cooperation in the fight against serious and complex crimes and against transnational crime.” Thus, he said, progress is being made towards an “unprecedented level of cooperation and exchange of information between both countries.”

The signing of this instrument represents the latest in a series of agreements that are necessary for the country to be readmitted to the United States visa waiver program. Uruguay will be permanently incorporated into this program once this agreement is “fully implemented” and a series of requirements established in the plan are met.

The U.S. Embassy in Uruguay, meanwhile, stressed that progress continues to be made to make Uruguay eligible for the Visa Waiver program. The office stressed that the agreement allows for a “more fluid exchange of information.” “We continue to move forward toward our goal. This important agreement will allow us to expand and deepen cooperation in the area of ​​border security and immigration,” said Ambassador Heide Fulton.

In January, the governments signed a memorandum of cooperation that focused on information sharing, with an emphasis on biometric data. The agreement also aimed to improve border security. The exchange of this data would allow the identity of travelers to be verified, their “migration status” to be determined, and “potential threats linked to terrorism or crime” to be identified.

This memorandum, Martinelli said, seeks to “verify the identity of the persons” who request admission, entry, transit, departures, visas or other immigration benefits. It also aims to support decisions on “inadmissibility or expulsion,” in accordance with the laws of both countries. At the same time, it allows promoting the prevention, detection and investigation of serious crimes such as terrorism,” the government official stressed.

“Uruguay is very close to being one of the few countries in the world that will not require a visa to enter,” he said. Chile is also on that list.

At the end of November, Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou had stressed that the talks between the two States to achieve the exemption are “on the right track,” although he preferred to be cautious and not “get ahead of schedule.” The issue was on the table at a meeting that Lacalle Pou held with President Joe Biden. “It should be imminent,” Lacalle Pou said at the time.

Ambassador Fulton told El País newspaper in July that she cannot give an exact date for Uruguay’s inclusion in the program, although she said that this is the idea. She explained that negotiations are “moving forward.” “It is a process of aligning the exchange of information between various agencies to monitor travelers. I cannot give a specific date, but we are moving forward,” she said.

The representative of the United States government said that Uruguay is an “economically strong partner” and highlighted it as a “champion of democracy in the region and in the world.” The governments have sought “ways to strengthen both regional and global security” as well as “mitigate the impact of climate change” and “confront shared threats.”

The issue had previously been part of talks with a group of Republican and Democratic senators, who presented a bill in Congress to eliminate tariffs on Uruguayan products, remove the visa requirement for businesspeople and begin studying the possibility of no longer requiring this document from any citizen.Infobae.