Six countries from former Communist Bloc to be granted visa-free travel to US

If you've spent any extended time in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc during the last couple of years you know that one of the biggest gripes people there have had is that while Americans can travel to their countries without a visa, they cannot travel to America without one.

This has irked the likes of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and others even more since they joined the European Union in 2004.

Well, there's good news in the region today. The US has announced that beginning Nov. 17, citizens of six Central and Eastern European countries will no longer need visas to visit the US.

The countries are: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Hungary.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on a visit to Hungary, is quoted by the Associated Press as saying the decision to let these countries into the so-called visa waver program is tantamount to "sweeping away the last dust of the Iron Curtain."

South Korea will also receive visa-waver status on Nov. 17.

Curiously, Poland didn't make the cut -- which is really going to piss the Poles off, given that they've been huge supporters of the US war in Iraq (joining the likes of Albania, Macedonia and Georgia as the US' fiercest allies in that particular conflict) and have agreed to host a controversial arm of the US missile defense shield.

Perhaps they'll be rethinking that last one.

Filed under: Europe