Veterans barred from US-built hotels in Germany?

Currently living in Italy, I can say firsthand that SOFA agreements are a part of daily life, for better and for worse. Many of these agreements were fashioned decades ago, looking to form an agreement where we could happily coexist among our host nation's citizens. The problems is that times have changed drastically. For example, the SOFA here in Italy says that dependents are not allowed to work on the Italian economy, or to provide services for profit, as it detracts from the ability of the locals to sell their services. Women have been threatened with deportation for things as simple as babysitting another American's children, cutting hair, or continuing their home sales businesses. In the case where a spouse has a legitimate work from home position in an established company, some spouses fight for a year or more to obtain a work visa, and then are denied their on base privileges like health care and commissary access because they are not here on the mission visa with their sponsor.

So why not just renegotiate the SOFA? Unfortunately, the military members and majority of the spouses stand to lose a lot more. In the case of Italy, they have said upfront that a renegotiation would remove the paragraphs that allow us to skip paying many of the taxes that Italian residents face, such as car registration "road tax," a tax on each television in the home, and really, taxes on just about every other thing you can imagine as the economy keeps falling into a deeper hole here.

I imagine Germany's SOFA agreement is a similar situation. While their economy is doing much better than Italy's, Germany is known for making everything work to their benefit (can you blame them?). I imagine that the situation is being investigated, but at this point, a renegotiation of the SOFA, simply for veterans to be able to stay at the resort, would result in our service members losing even more overall.

I try to stay objective when I think about these things. Can you even imagine Germany having their own resort at Disney World in Florida? We are pretty lucky that we have access to Edelweiss at all!

SGM (Join to see) - SOFAs are negotiated by the Department of State, not DoD, and, therefore, there is no impetuous to renegotiate them where they would be more favorable to military personnel or their family members.

When I was assigned to the USAREUR Provost Marshal Office, SOFA/Customs fell under my responsibility. I routinely got calls from irate military retirees because of the rules (taxes required to be paid on commissary purchases, inability to use APO, etc., etc.). A typical call was, "I can shop in the commissary at Ft Bragg, why can't I in Germany?" Of course, they did not like the answer that I gave them, which was that they chose to live in a foreign country and that they are required to live by that country's laws and any agreements between that country and the US, as it pertained to military personnel and their family members, as well as retirees and their family members.

I got complaints from members of the Army Reserve in Germany about not being allowed in the commissary except during certain times and, then, having to pay taxes on purchases, IAW the SOFA. I told them that, if I were them, I would simply wear my uniform to the commissary and PX. In that way, the ID card was not checked and nobody would question if they were active or reserve.

One day, one of my Military Customs supervisors came to see me to inform me that they were going to apprehend an Air Force major from SHAPE HQ when he showed up at the Heidelberg PX to pick up a bicycle he had ordered. The SOFA did not allow a military member assigned outside of Germany to purchase items in AAFES facilities in Germany. Apparently, the AAFES bike shop in Heidelberg carried a certain bike that the major could not get in Belgium, so he ordered it and was going to pick it up. During a routine check of sales slips/order forms by my Customs folks, they noticed the "violation" and were going to apprehend him when he showed up to pick up the bike. I, of course, told them that they would not apprehend the major (as I thought it was dumb, even if it was IAW the SOFA), but I did not want to be on record of violating the law or telling them to disregard the law. What I did was call the major and explain the situation to him. I purchased the bike for him and he picked it up at my house. There is always a way to get things done, if you really want to help people.

I did find that the German Customs folks were very reasonable and I was able to get them to grant a great many "exceptions" to the SOFA, to include blanket exceptions for certain things. For example, we got blanket exceptions for military family members to use AAFES, Commissary, medical and other facilities in Germany (and Italy) when their sponsors were deployed or TDY. Technically, they were not authorized to use those facilities if the sponsors were assigned out of the country for any reason (to include temporary duty, leave, etc.).

I met with the German Customs Minister in Bonn one day and mentioned that my Customs folks seemed to have more difficulty getting exceptions from his folks than I had getting them from him. He asked me to come to the window and look outside. From his window, we could see the US Embassy and the US flag flying. He stated that he had grown up during WWII and had seen what the US had done to help Germany after the war. He said that, when he had a decision to make that could go either way, he would go to his window and look at the flag and decide in favor of the US. He said that his folks, most of whom were much younger than him, had no such "love" for the US and its military members. He told me that I could always call him to get a favorable response to our requests, which I did, when appropriate.

No bueno. Travelling this big blue marble as a retired vet is top on the list and I would have tried to stay there. I'll head towards te pacific and leave Germany off the list. I planned on staying at that very resort.