Colleagues pick up Kirk’s fight on Polish visas

CHICAGO – Weighed down by her husband’s ruinous debts, Wanda Borowski left Poland 25 years ago to find work in the U.S., unaware it would mean two decades without seeing the son she left behind.

Poland is among the few European Union countries left out of a U.S. waiver program that allows people to travel to the U.S. up to 90 days without a visa. While Poland is a key U.S. ally in many respects, it’s not included at least partly out of concern that Polish visitors will stay on as illegal immigrants – the reason Borowski’s son Jaroslav has never been allowed to visit her.

“I’m extremely disappointed and confused,” Borowski, 62, said in a tearful conversation at her suburban Chicago home, where she cares for her ailing husband. “I want someone to explain why my son cannot come here for just three weeks.”

Stories similar to Borowski’s led U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois to take up the visa-waiver cause, an issue dear to the million residents of Polish descent in the Chicago area. After an emotional trip to Poland, he was campaigning to have Congress extend the waiver to Poland when he suffered a stroke last month that forced him to undergo emergency surgery and prepare for lengthy rehabilitation.

Other devoted campaigners are pushing ahead on the issue. U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat, reintroduced a bill to expand the visa waiver program to Poland and a few other countries on Jan. 31, about a week after the 52-year-old Kirk’s stroke.

But Quigley and others say Kirk played an important role. His willingness to reach across party lines to support the effort made him an invaluable proponent at a time of divided government in Washington, Quigley said.