Brazil waives visas for visitors from U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan

“You’re going to require a visa from our people? Well we’ll require a visa from your people!”

No agreement required. Visas usually come after migration begins (you used to be able to arrive by ship, no visa required anywhere in the world).

That seems to have been Brazil’s policy. I don’t think too many Canadians were going and overstaying, working illegally or otherwise causing trouble more than average.

It’s only the senior officials that get diplomatic passports.

Create a process that decides and doesn’t report to them.

Last year Indian government planned to giving two types of passports. A blue passport for all the educated skilled folks and an orange passport meant for blue color working class people. The idea was that to negotiate a separate visa system for high skilled Indian citizens with other countries.

There was an much uproar over this idea and it was shelved. It was both immoral and unethical to treat your citizens like this. A rich industrialist reportedly told PM's office that all government officials be given Orange passport if this were to pass to show solidarity with working class Indians.

The lack of original designs were something that worried a lot of people at the time, but it turned out that PC clones killed everything else world wide so it wouldn't have mattered in the end.

While it was easy to find examples of inflated prices (the first PC clone was launched at US$15K for a configuration for which IBM charged US$5K, for example) there were a few cases where the local copy cost less than the original (like the TK3000 compared to the Apple //e).

I lobbied against the "reserved market policy" at the time and still wish that Brazil had taken Taiwan's path instead, but people remember things wrong and don't learn what they should from it.

An Atari 2600 clone was mentioned in another comment, for example. Videogames were not subject to the policy. Atari and Polyvox/Gradiente had a joint venture for the 2600 and Philips made its Odyssey 2, both things which the policy prohibited. Yet people remember the policy as being to blame for the late and expensive games even though the situation persisted for decades after its end in 1992.

First and foremost, the money went to Brazilian companies that built that infrastructure.

Second, it was a loan that has to be paid back by those governments.

Third, the loan is covered by insurance.

You mean like those projects that China funds to successfully increase their international relevance and financial prosperity? Like all the ports and plants and railways?

I think dropping it makes sense, because pragmatically the damage outweighs the benefits. But simplistic, partisan tarring of existing policy doesn't help us learn anything new.

That is the same as when a Brazilian would like to visit the US. This general waiving of requirements simply guarantees that Brazil's the only one getting the short end of the stick. A negotiated reciprocal agreement would be much better.

It has fallen off a cliff under Trump