• tal
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    1 year ago

    The Law and Justice party is being rocked by reports that Polish consulates issued visas in Africa and Asia in exchange for bribes, opening the door for migrants to enter the European Union — which some hoped to use as a way into the United States.

    I mean, I get the Schengen Area angle for the EU. If you can physically get inside the Schengen Area, there aren’t any internal controls keeping you from going anywhere in Schengen and staying wherever. However, the US thing seems like a stretch to try to show relevance for an American audience.

    People in most EU members do have visa-free access to the US, but that’s citizens of that country. Just being some random person out of Africa who happens to be physically present in France or whatever doesn’t mean that the US is going to let you in.

    Now, okay, if you can be legally present in Poland for long enough – and I don’t know whether the visa in question permits for that – then I would guess that there’s probably a route to Polish citizenship. Most countries have this. If you become a Polish citizen, then you can get visa-free access to the US, and then you could be illegally present in the US if you enter the US and then overstay your maximum visit length.

    But there isn’t a direct link between getting the visa and heading to the US.

    • @misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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      31 year ago

      From what I’ve read they used P2 artist/entertainer visa, likely some weird corner case that could be abused with enough diplomatic level backing. Polish people are very resourceful when it comes to arranging solutions to impossible things.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    51 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The Law and Justice party is being rocked by reports that Polish consulates issued visas in Africa and Asia in exchange for bribes, opening the door for migrants to enter the European Union — which some hoped to use as a way into the United States.

    Critics say the governing party raised the specter of immigration to frighten Poles and then offered promises of keeping them secure, while a corrupt cell operating within the diplomatic corps opened a channel for migrants to enter the EU.

    Poland has opened its door to Ukrainian refugees, who are primarily white and Christian, but governing party officials have long made clear that they consider Muslims and others from different religions or ethnicities to be a threat to the nation’s traditionally Catholic cultural identity and security.

    The prosecutor general, Zbigniew Ziobro, said authorities were working to bring the wrongdoers to justice and insisted the scale of the affair was smaller than what the media and opposition claim, with just 268 visas given out in the scheme.

    Wawrzyk had been responsible for preparing a regulation making it easier for foreign workers from countries including Iran, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates to enter Poland.

    The governing party fought back with new election videos on social media seeking to link the leading opposition leader, Donald Tusk, to widespread migration to Europe in his past roles.


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