The United States, France and the United Kingdom at the turn of the century: trends in policy and organization

One of the most important factors affecting the country’s share of international markets during the decade of the 1990s was the Visa Waiver Pilot Program. This had been created by Congress in 1986 and its first purpose was to ‘encourage and facilitate travel to the United States by tourists considered to be little risk for immigration purposes’. Step by step the USA extended the number of countries where tourists benefiting from this facility originated, but the scheme remained theoretically experimental. Towards the end of 1999 the TIA declared that, during the 106th Congress, it would ‘work aggressively to establish broad support for making the Visa Waiver Pilot Program a permanent program’. The campaign succeeded. Permanency was confirmed in October 2000. The issue had featured continuously at the head of all TIA’s lobbying activities over several years.