Visa and Passport access for America?

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

Recently I was chatting with a British FLAG rep offshore and he mentioned something to me that may be worth following up on.

As we all know the USA is being seen to be making moves towards increased security.

As part of this program it seems that they will be insisting that anyone entering the USA has a new style passport that is machine readable. It seems that they may well be bringing this into effect around Sep of this year.
The British Government/EU already issues these types of passports at but, it seems, but there are many people around that do not have machine readable passports.

In effect I was told that any new passports, that are not machine readable, issued by a UK passports agency after the, self imposed, US deadline will not be acceptable to the American authorities for entry into the country.

Basically my colleague suggested that the way around this is to have a new passport issued before the deadline whic is machine readable.

If you currently work in the USA and have a passport due to expire in the next year, right or wrong… it might be wise to renew it before August of this year.

If I find any concrete info on this I’ll post it in this thread. If anyone else knows anything about this tell us!

best regards
James Mc

[Gina McLauchlan]

This is one carried over from the old forum

From the US Embassy in The Hague, The Netherlands (http://www.usemb.nl/cnvviwap.htm):

Effective October 26, 2004
(May 15, 2003 for travelers carrying Belgian passports), any traveler wishing to enter the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program, including bearers of diplomatic or official passports and children, need to comply with the machine readable passport requirement. This means that the person must have either a machine readable passport or a U.S. visa (a visa qualifies as machine readable). A child can travel on his/her parent’s passport if the child has a U.S. visa in that passport. (All Dutch passports, issued since January 1, 1995, are machine readable.)

Bearers of Netherlands passports without a visa please note:as of October 26, 2004, families and groups should obtain an individual passport for each traveler, including infants. Machine readable passports typically have biodata for only one traveler in the machine readable zone (MRZ), and families will likely be denied visa-free entry into the U.S. if the biodata for only one traveler is machine readable.

Passports issued on or after October 26, 2004 must include a biometric identifier. If your passport is issued prior to this date, provided it is an individual machine readable passport, you may continue to use the passport to travel visa free even though it does not have the biometric identifier.

—

The USA installed in their dutch embassy a fingerprint-scanner recently.
The USA is interested in more private details also (ie. your creditcard number)…

Regards,

Ronald

[Author]

Posts