Date: February 23, 2007
At the end of this summary is a Call To Action
and a suggested text for your immediate use.
The U.S. Congress continues to discuss
legislation that would provide Poland and its people the benefit of
visa free travel to the United States. When the legislation is
passed, your families and friends, who are anxious to come to the US
for a family visit or a business trip for a period of at least 90
days, will be able to do so without going through the complicated,
time consuming and expensive visa application procedure.
You may recall, that in the beginning of 2006,
Senators Santorum and Mikulski proposed Amendment S.4000 to the
comprehensive Senate legislation. Later, and in addition to this,
Senator Voinovich introduced complementary legislation. Regrettably,
both actions ended in failure.
Now, in the new 110th US Congress, the efforts to
include Poland in the Visa Waiver Program continue. On January 18,
Congressman Phil English (R-PA) introduced bill H.R. 651: "Secure
Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Act". A few days later, on
January 22, a corresponding legislation, S. 342, carrying the same
title, was introduced in the Senate by Senator George Voinovich
(D-OH). Both pieces of legislation propose a pilot Visa Waiver
program. Even though the legislation is non-country specific, Poland
is consistently indicated as one of the first and most certain
beneficiaries.
Most recently, on February 15, the Senate
legislation was adopted by the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee as a part of another security bill -
S. 4 (bill: "Improving America's Security by Implementing Unfinished
Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007" sponsored by
Sen. Harry Reid D-NV). Legislation S. 4 is currently expected to be
presented for general debate on the Senate floor in the immediate
future, in fact as soon as during the next week (week of February
26th).
We are now asking all of you, both as individuals
and as leaders in the community, to give this your utmost and most
immediate attention.
Please Act Now and contact both of your
Senators to express your support for the Visa Waiver provisions.
Make also sure to forward this appeal to others.
The message to your senators is: "As your
constituent I ask you to support the passage of Visa Waiver
provisions as a part of the S.4 legislation. Please vote
in favor
of inclusion of the Visa Waiver Program provisions in the text of
S.4"
Contact Information To Your Senators