Visa Liberalization

I’ve spent most of November on the road thanks to a program that pairs old Peace Corps Volunteers with new ones – so after 1 ½ years here, I’ve been matched with two volunteers from the new group who have been here seven months. It’s been interesting visiting them in their sites and seeing what their lives are like and hopefully I’ve been able to add some helpful insight in dealing with their issues.

I visited a volunteer Himare, a small coastal town in southern Albania. Southern Albania is very different from the northern Adriatic coast that I call home. Going south, you pass through Vlore, go through a national forest, and come out to see the Ionian Sea with huge mountains that run right into the sea. Himare has a Greek minority. Greek is spoken on the streets. Students speak Greek amongst themselves. I’m not quite sure if this area was always Greek or if it was created by Albanians returning from work abroad, but there is a lot of ethnic tension. Many people there speak Greek as a first language. In the north where I live, many people speak Italian but there isn’t any sort of Italian community. The challenges of teaching large, multi-leveled classes are multiplied when students’ first language might not even be Albanian. It’s a unique challenge to volunteers in border towns along the south and southeastern part of the country.

While I was visiting, the EU approved short-term, visa-free travel for Albanians (Eastern Approaches analysis here). Visa-free travel has been a topic of discussion in the news since I’ve been here, with channels covering and discussing it even when there wasn’t anything new to add to the conversation. On November 9th, a day after the visa liberalization, the EU moved to launch membership negotiations with Albania. There were concerts and celebrations. The Albanian government spent countless money putting up signs and advertisements throughout Tirana about Albania becoming part of the EU.

Certainly, this is something to look forward to. But I, along with many other Albanians, am skeptical. Firstly, of the 13 million illegal immigrants in the US today, half of them are estimated to have entered the US legally. Given the huge brain drain facing Albanian society, how will this affect the EU countries receiving Albanian immigrants, and how will it affect Albanian society? The travel is visa-free only for a period of 3 months, but how often will Albanians, who have a history of illegal immigration to Greece and Italy, actually return? The EU has already said that visa-free travel through the Schengen Zone is a privilege than can be revoked. It would be terrible to have to lose it since it’s taken so long to get it in the first place. Secondly, one can’t help but feel that this just one big political distraction from the other problems facing Albania. The Socialists are still complaining about last June’s elections. Albania still has a long way to go in meeting EU benchmarks for parliamentary organization and rule of law, amongst other things. And the latest flooding in the northern regions of the country have been devastating. How important is visa-free travel when ranked with all this other issues? While I think it’s critical for Albanians to go abroad and experience other parts of the world, and while they deserve the freedom to do so, the weight that visa-free travel has been given in current discourse is disproportionate to the real issues facing the country.