English Section

US visa waiver for Poland ‘over next couple of months’: Trump

23.09.2019 22:30
The United States expects to be able to make Poland part of its Visa Waiver Program “over the next couple of months,” President Donald Trump said on Monday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and US President Donald Trump brief reporters during a bilateral meeting in New York on Monday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and US President Donald Trump brief reporters during a bilateral meeting in New York on Monday.Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka

Speaking to reporters in New York during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump said: “I think over the next couple of months we can have it done.”

Trump told newsmen: “We’re also doing waivers — the visa waivers for Poland. And that’s in the works. We’re working on the structure right now.”

Addressing Poland’s Duda, he added: “But you can report back to the people of Poland, and the Polish people in the United States, that President Trump got it done, and nobody else could for a long time, as you know.

Duda told Trump that Poles have been waiting for the move for 30 years.

Polish private broadcaster TVN 24 cited the US ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, as saying after the talks between the two presidents in New York that Poles were expected to be able to travel visa-free to America from the start of 2020.

The threshold for a country to enter the US Visa Waiver Program is a 3-percent refusal rate.

The rate for Polish nationals for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2018 was 3.99 percent, down from 5.92 percent a year earlier, according to the US embassy.

Meanwhile, in recent months a growing proportion of Polish applicants have been issued US visas, causing the denial rate to drop below 2.8 percent for the first time in history, the onet.pl news website reported on Monday, citing sources it did not name.

(gs/pk)

Source: TVP Info, www.whitehouse.gov