The standard benchmark, for instance, is a visa rejection rate of less than 4% for at least three years. Another thing we look at is the evidence of the tendency for nationals of a particular country to overstay or to make asylum claims. Another factor is the security of passports or travel documents of a foreign country, and issues such as criminality. If there's a really high level of, say, organized crime, that would be a concern.
There are over 20 criteria, but those are some of the principal ones we consider. And when we do a visa exemption we send a team in to do a risk assessment. They review all of those criteria and they make a report. But when we see a particular country....
Let me be clear about the Mexican situation. We were receiving more asylum claims from that particular country than from any other country for which we have postwar immigration. Since we began receiving asylum claimants, we've received more from Mexico than from anywhere else. That begged the question that if we were not to impose a visa on Mexico, given those facts, then why should we have a visa on any other country? It really got to the point where....
And I remind the committee, for instance, that the previous government--and this is not a criticism, it's a fact--gave the then-Czechoslovakia visa exemption in the mid-1990s. Two years later the government reimposed visa requirements on the Czech Republic after we had received 1,000 asylum claimants. This government granted the Czech Republic a visa exemption in the fall of 2007, and reimposed visa requirements this summer, after we had received 3,000 asylum claimants. So in that sense we are far more patient in trying to work with our foreign partners to deal with these issues than has been the case in the past. If anything, in my judgment we should be criticized for having been so patient.