"It will not increase transnational crime. I am sure the ASEAN governments have already carefully thought through the possibility and concluded it will not," international relations expert Hariyadi Wiryawan said when contacted here on Saturday.
He said before they agreed to support the idea of a common visa system, the ASEAN leaders must have considered everything carefully, including the security aspects.
Moreover, he said, ASEAN would not be the first region to apply a common visa policy.
"The European Union introduced it a long time ago. Also, I think, the ASEAN`s system will not be the same as the European Union`s," he said.
He even viewed that the common visa would benefit ASEAN a lot because a non-ASEAN citizen visiting a country in the region would not be required to have visa before visiting the rest of ASEAN members, so that it would increase the arrivals of foreign tourists.
Tourism operators in the Indonesian tourist resort island of Bali have hailed the plan to introduce a common visa within countries grouped in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
"The implementation of the common visa within the region will benefit tourism industry operators," Chairman of the Indonesian Tourism Industry Association Ngurah Wijaya said Thursday.
He said the adoption of a common visa system would enable a person to enter all countries in the region with a visa issued by one of the countries.
"Yet, the common visa system will slightly correct growth in the use of visa on arrival," he said.
Wijaya also believed the implementation of a common ASEAN visa system would benefit tourism in Indonesia, Bali or the Island of gods, in particular.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
