Waving “Adios” To The “Waiver” Program

In this travel piece on the coming overhaul of the U.S. “visa waiver” program, fighting through all of the Independent’s usual reporting flotsam, we locate the actual story gist:

…Currently, British citizens travelling to the US are asked to provide details about themselves on a green form handed out during their flight. If accepted on arrival, this allows them to enter the country without a visa for up to 90 days. But from 12 January next year, visitors will be required to submit the same information online at least three days before they travel…

…new rules make it compulsory for short-term visitors to the US to register via the website of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization before boarding an aircraft. The site officially opens on 1 August, with potential travellers being encouraged to sign up as soon as possible. The revamped system will affect nations participating in the visa waiver program, which gives citizens from 27 countries the right to remain in the US for short periods of time without a visa. In the past financial year, more than 15 million people from these countries travelled to America under this banner…

However:

…an approved application remains valid for up to two years, or until the traveller’s passport expires. It also entitles the holder to multiple entries into the US during this period…

Why?:

…”Getting this information in advance enables our frontline personnel to determine whether a visa-free traveller presents a threat before boarding an aircraft or arriving on our shores,” said Michael Chertoff, the US Secretary of Homeland Security…

Hmmm, call it whatever the Secretary will, but a horse is a horse, of course. There is no getting away from what this means. Essentially, since it can be used repeatedly for two years and/or for the duration of the foreign passport, this Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) will function much like the “e-visa” Australia has demanded for years.

Thus “visa waiver” appears, in practical terms, to be no more. In another sense this may be encouraging, though. Next, we can assume to expect to hear that those who aim to cross into the U.S. between border posts, illicitly, via the southern land frontier, will also have to go online and file their intentions and await approval, three days before they make their first crossing attempt?

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Or more likely not, for as Sen Obama has recently chided us:

I don’t understand when people are going worrying about “We need to have English only.” They want to pass a law — “we just — we want English only”. Now I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But — but understand this. Instead of worrying about whether, uh, immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish! You should be thinking about how your child can become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup. Right?

Sen Obama is laboring under a misconception (hard to imagine, being a “genius“), but he isn’t alone. It is all too common for Americans who don’t live here and pick up their knowledge of European linguistic dexterity primarily from films, TV, and many European tourists they may meet inside the U.S., to believe that every continental speaks English near-perfectly, albeit with an intriguing accent. It also afflicts Americans who visit continental Europe briefly as tourists, for in that realm they interact mostly with English-speaking “natives” whose livelihoods, naturally, depend on their maintaining reasonable English skills.

Mundane daily reality is rather different. Sen Obama may think so, but continentals don’t ALL speak English. Unless work or chosen lifestyle demands it, European continentals’ adulthood second language ability, including in English, is often little substantively better than most Americans’ main, school-learned second tongue.

True, English proficiency varies from country to country. But while most Dutch or Danes do speak passable to fluent conversational English, in comparison most French, most Spanish and most Italians — although they likely have retained or picked up a few words or simple English phrases — do not.

And there are, unsurprisingly, also varying levels of English linguistic competence even within countries. In France, an Anglophone with little French beyond “merci beaucoup” will find the “natives’” English skills in and around, say, Calais, generally better than in Auvergne. In Italy, English is far more commonly understood in Rome or Venice than in rural Sicily. (Unless, in the latter, the Sicilian has cousins in Brooklyn, of course.)

If we think about why that might be, we already understand, personally, the main reason, for it has probably touched all of us individually at some point: one usually learns, and most importantly retains in adult life, a fluency in a second or even third language because one absolutely must. Hence why English — a European language, too, in case Sen Obama is unaware — is common among non-Anglophone Europeans. In employment terms, English is often vital, or at least very useful.

While we’re on the subject, English has also become commonly spoken in parts of Spain:

Although, one doesn’t normally see Spanish politicians demanding Spanish children learn English because of the presence of many “Spanish poor” elderly, lonely, or unemployable U.K. expats, but let’s not digress.

We tend easily to forget that Americans already are well-imbued with Spanish “feeling.” Indeed, many Anglophone Americans already do speak Spanish to varying degrees of fluency, out of work necessity or life choice/requirement: Anglophone Americans having been raised in El Paso, unsurprisingly, are apt to be more familiar with Spanish than those who’ve lived their lives in Maine. Just as many non-Anglophone Europeans are familiar with, and speak some, English. (Because of Americans’ familiarity with hearing Spanish, many French, for instance, assert Americans try to speak French in too similar a way to “Spanish” — meaning “Mexican,” not Spanish as spoken in Spain — thus creating the odd sound of French being spoken with a “Spanish” inflexion. Years ago, yours truly was told that directly.)

However, because of mass Mexican, Central and South American (far too often illegal) migration to the U.S., Sen Obama believes Anglophones should have to learn Spanish. Presumably, one doesn’t detect in that an undercurrent of Sen Obama’s perhaps believing Anglophone children need to speak Spanish in order to converse better with “the help” someday. However, regardless, that also presumes it will still be possible to pay “the help.” To do that, if Anglophone children really do “need” to learn any second language, given worldwide economic trends it would seem that, rather than any other European language, Mandarin Chinese would likely be far more long-term monetarily worthwhile.