I'm not sure why the Romanian & Bulgarian issue is being mentioned.<p>Another part of it is Canadians and Americans have access to the EU where you can just get there without forms or paying anything whereas you have to fill in a silly form and pay a bit of cash to go the other way.<p>Semantically it's not termed a visa but it's just like one so this is the EU trying to put in a silly form and small payment as a reciprocal measure.
Since there's lots of discussion here about overstays, here's the US government report for overstays broken down by country:<p><a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY%2015%20DHS%20Entry%20and%20Exit%20Overstay%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY%2015...</a><p>Some highlights from the category of <i>FY 2015 Overstay rates for nonimmigrants with B-1/B-2 visas admitted to the United States for business or pleasure via air and sea POEs for non-VWP Countries (excluding Canada and Mexico):</i><p>Bulgaria 1.48%<p>Romania 1.81%<p>Average of all countries 1.60%<p>The highest rates are Bhutan 23.98% and Djibouti 26.80%.<p>One important factor that the report doesn't give is the difficulty of getting the visa in first place. Some countries have a <i>much</i> higher visa rejection rate by American consulates than others. Those would be interesting statistics to see.<p>I couldn't find a similar report for Canada, but I'd expect the proportions by country to be similar, but perhaps higher overall for Canada since Canada is slightly easier to enter than the US.
I don't mind paying a nominal fee to enter the EU. Hopefully, this happens at the border. Mailing in my passport to a black box EU embassy and waiting an unspecified amount of time is what annoys me about visa processes.<p>I'm also not afraid of "Romanian and Bulgarian hordes" or whatever tired immigrant trope was used to not open the borders to those two countries.<p>Work it out peeps!
EU needs to thread more careful here and solve this problem rather than accuse Canada for arrogance.<p>If visa exemption is messed up with Canada (and even the US!) then Britain voting for exiting the EU becomes considerably more likely.<p>After all Britain (and other Western European states) still sees itself as closer tied to Canada, US, Australia than to Romania.
Romania and Bulgaria both control their own borders, they are not members of the Schengen Zone. Therefore this has absolutely nothing to do with an exchange of visa free travel. A fair exchange would be that Romania and Bulgaria both revoke visa free travel... although they don't offer it in the first place.<p>It sounds like the EU is trying to throw its weight around in order to gain political favour with neighbour states. I hope everyone says no. The EU would see its tourism from more affluent countries plummet, cutting off the nose to spite the face.<p>It's political posturing and probably nothing would come out of it if everyone did say no.
Always amusing to see the US lecturing European countries on how they don't welcome migrants well enough, and then see that these additional visa requirement for "bad european countries" which population they do not see coming on US soil...
Yes, and Turkey (80 million middle eastern people) will get EU membership.<p>Merkel cut a deal w/ Turkey to take back immigrants in return for EU membership.<p>link: <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-turkey-idUSKCN0SC08B20151019" rel="nofollow">http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-tu...</a>