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Comment by infotainment | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't know, the US requires every foreign visitor to get approved for entry via ESTA, which is basically a visa in every conceivable way except that they don't call it one. It's also essentially identical to ETIAS, the system mentioned in this article.

IMO, ESTA is and has always been always a blatant violation of the Visa Wavier treaty, so it's not unreasonable for Europe to respond in kind.

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The fact that the US did it first doesn’t make it reasonable. Both policies can be bad on their own terms, and either way, the costs will almost entirely be borne by people who had nothing to do with drafting the US policy in the first place.

What course of action do you suggest the EU take if not this one?

What is the correct solution to this problem?

what they were doing before: nothing.

Do you not view this as a problem, or do you not understand why the EU may view the status quo as a problem?

Sure, but two wrongs don't make a right.

I'm not sure you can reduce a complex political situation down to such a simplistic maxim.

That's like saying that the US was wrong to enter into WW2 because two wrongs don't make a right and war is bad therefore the US is bad.

For more on the downsides of visas and tourist registration requirements, see https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jecfin/v40y2016i4d10.1007_s121...

Meanwhile, Africa is happily going in the opposite direction https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38127560

Same thing they always do: issue a declaration of deep concern!

It's a bit weird that they're only doing this now, since ESTA's been a thing for 16 years. I always assumed that non-EU visitors already needed a visa since every other country seems to demand it.

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