When President Barack
Obama stops in Poland on May 27 during his visit to Europe next week, the
Poles and their friends in Congress will be watching closely to see if the
president will fulfill his pledge to make progress on their most valued issue --
Poland's drive to join the State Department's Visa
Waiver Program.
Poland, which is the only member of the 25-country "Schengen area"
whose citizens are not able to travel to the United States without obtaining a
visa in advance, has been petitioning the administration to let it in the
program for a long time. After neighboring countries such as the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, and Latvia entered the program, the Poles finally
got a pledge from the Obama administration that it would work with Congress to
make it happen.
"I am going to make this a priority," Obama said on Dec. 8,
sitting alongside Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski. "And I
want to solve this issue before very long. My expectation is, is that this
problem will be solved during my presidency."
But now, more than five months later, Poland's advocates on Capitol Hill say
they've seen no movement from the administration on the issue and are calling
on Obama to announce his plan to get it done when he arrives in Poland.
"It's a campaign promise, it's the number one issue
right now in U.S.-Polish relations. The president should come through on his
campaign commitment to Polish-Americans that he was going to do this," Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said in a Friday
interview with The Cable.
"This would also help repair damaged relations with
Poland, especially after the disastrous missile defense decision announced on
the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland [in 2009]," Kirk said. That
was when the administration decided to alter plans to station interceptors in
Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of a different approach.
Kirk took over Senate leadership on this issue
following the retirement of Sen. George
Voinovich (R-OH), who actually
offered to trade his vote on the New START treaty with
Russia for the Polish visa waiver program entry last year. Kirk hails from
Illinois, which has the largest Polish population outside of Poland, he brags.
On April 26, Kirk sent
a letter to Obama to announce his support for the congressional
legislation that would pave the way for Poland to enter the program. Other
lawmakers who signed the letter were the bill's spokesperson Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Mike Quigley (D - IL), Daniel
Lipinski (D-IL), Jan Schakowsky
(D -IL), and Brian Higgins (D -NY).
On a conference call Friday morning, The Cable asked Deputy National Security
Advisor Ben Rhodes what progress the
president would announce on this issue when he gets to Poland.
"We believe we've made some progress and we'll have
more to say, I think, about this when we're in Poland. The president will be
able to specifically outline the steps that we've taken and the roadmap that we
see. We're following through on our commitment to be responsive to Polish
concerns," said Rhodes.
We pressed Rhodes on Obama's promise to get it done
"during my presidency," which could mean 2012 or 2016, depending on which side
of the aisle you talk to. But Rhodes didn't have any specifics.
"[The president's] working to follow through on that
precise commitment that you referenced, and we'll be discussing this in Warsaw
and have more to say there," he said.
"It's a tremendous opportunity for the president on
the 27th. And if he flubs it, then he flubs it," said Kirk. "We'll see."
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