CHOP, Ukraine (Reuters) - Every week Bilo lines up for hours at a checkpoint to cross the Ukrainian border and see his mother in Hungary.

"I visit her rather rarely, just once or twice a week," said the 28-year-old railway worker, smiling through the window of his old Mercedes, which stands in a line of three dozen cars.

"I live in Uzhgorod and she is just a few kilometers (miles) away in Zahony, but that is Hungary. Now it is easy. But they promised to impose visas. I do not know how it will work. She is old and needs my help. It will be hard for us."

Bilo's family is just one of many thousands of families in Transcarpathia, Ukraine's most western region, who will suffer when a new visa regime is implemented in neighboring countries hoping to join the 15-nation European Union.

The multiethnic region, which has become home to thousands of Hungarians, Romanians, Roma, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, Germans and Jews, borders four EU applicant countries -- Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania.

Those countries are closing tight their eastern borders as they try to convince the wealthy and skeptical West that they can be trusted to keep out drugs, arms and unwanted migrants.

Some of the countries have promised to wait until the last minute to impose visas for millions of their ethnic kin and Ukrainians living in the border regions, and have vowed to try to make the new rules as easy as possible.

But fears are growing in Ukraine's capital Kiev and across the country that a new visa regime will isolate the former Soviet state, which is struggling to shed its communist past, boost its economy and improve living standards for its 49 million people.

Officials say it would be a heavy blow for millions of those who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet era. They will now have to face a new wall.

PAPER WALL
"We have the impression here that the European Union is building a wall just like the Soviet Union many years ago," said Volodymyr Horenetsky, mayor of Chop, a small city crossed by a major freight corridor between Moscow and southern Europe.

"This wall is different, it will be a paper wall. But nobody is going to win from this division, and people living in the border region will suffer the most," he told a group of foreign reporters. "It is not the best time for Chop."

Many in Chop, who easily mix Hungarian and Ukrainian languages, earn their living from the so-called "suitcase trade" -- smuggling cigarettes, gasoline or food products out of Ukraine to the border regions in Hungary, Poland or Romania.

Transcarpathia, a picturesque region of green mountains dotted with wooden churches and ruined castles, has one of the highest levels of unemployment in Ukraine. Nearly 13 percent of the workforce is jobless, official figures show.

Hennady Moscal, governor of Transcarpathia, said between 300,000 and 400,000 of the region's nearly 2 million people were working abroad on building sites or farms.

"People go abroad to Russia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Portugal to earn money. Some of them work officially, but not many. Almost 95 percent work illegally," he sighed.

Locals say only children and old people are left in some villages.

The clearly frustrated governor said the new visa regime would mean more problems for his poverty-stricken region which has seen many ruling masters over the centuries.

Transcarpathia was an eastern outpost of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the 19th century. After winning short-lived independence in 1918 the region fell under Czech control. Then the Nazi-Soviet pact handed it to the Kremlin in 1940.

"Transcarpathia is geographically situated in the center of Europe," said Moscal, adding that Uzhgorod, the regional capital where houses cry out for a coat of paint, was closer to Vienna than to Kiev.

"We used to live in Europe. I do not understand why they are closing doors on Ukraine ... The demands are very harsh," he said.

CRIME, CORRUPTION, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
President Leonid Kuchma has said Ukraine aims to join the European Union by 2011 but nobody in Brussels takes the goal very seriously as the ex-Soviet state has a long way to go in implementing political and economic reforms.

EU officials, hoping for a stable buffer zone, say Kiev must tackle organized crime and illegal immigration.

Ukraine is rated as one of the world's 10 most corrupt nations by Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-graft watchdog. The government regularly issues anti-corruption decrees but the actions fail to go much further than words.

Ukraine has also become a convenient transit route for illegal immigrants, drugs and arms.

Customs officials and border guards at the Chop crossing point said they seize minor drugs shipments every day. They also frequently detain illegal immigrants.

"This year we have detained 18 people at this checkpoint. They tried to cross with fake passports," said Evhen, a senior duty officer at the checkpoint.

"But it is more common for illegals to attempt to cross the border in forests or in mountains. There we detain up to 40 people every week. Ukraine is the easiest and the shortest way. We border with four Western countries," he said.

Most of the Ukrainian border crossings are under-equipped and under-staffed. Customs officers are poorly paid and reports of corruption are frequent. The country also has porous borders with Russia, Moldova and Belarus, its ex-Soviet family.

Officials cry out for funds, saying the cash-strapped state cannot afford necessary improvements to border security.

The European Union has started to help Ukraine strengthen its western borders through its TACIS aid program. It finances the reconstruction of the border crossing at the Ukrainian and Hungarian border, and a road and a bridge at the Polish border.

The two projects are worth about $4.5 million.

"It will improve things. But it will not solve the problems," said David Kelly, TACIS senior project engineer, overseeing the schemes. "Attitudes should change."

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