A way to thank Poland

Scripps Howard: President Bush had what he called a bittersweet moment in the Oval Office Wednesday. On the one hand, he said, he was happy to see his old friend, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. On the other, he was sad because Kwasniewski was stepping down after 10 years in office.
Yet Kwasniewski, with whom Bush said he had forged a strong personal and strategic relationship, would leave the Oval Office without something he and the Polish people wanted badly, something former President Lech Walesa described as a matter of honor for Poland, and something that Bush could confer with relative ease -- a visa waiver.
A visa waiver allows residents of a favored country one to visit the United States for up to 90 days on business or pleasure without going through the worsening hassle of obtaining a U.S. visa.
There are 27 visa waiver nations: all of Western Europe, including Scandinavia; Iceland, Slovenia in the Balkans, and Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Brunei in the Far East. (A separate waiver covers Canada and Mexico.)
Straightforward
The mechanics of visa waiver status are fairly straightforward: meeting international standards for passports and their verification and certain safeguards against abuse of the waiver.
And Poland has a valid claim on us. It is a member of NATO, the European Union and the coalition forces in Iraq and maybe the most pro-U.S. nation in Europe. Almost 9 million Americans identified themselves as of Polish descent in the 2000 Census. (Old joke: What do you call 11 really tough young Polish-American males? The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.)