President Signs Extension for MRP Requirement
Posted Aug 20, 2004
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President Bush signed H.R. 4417 into law on August 9, 2004. [Readers who are unfamiliar with this process may choose to read our MurthyDotCom article, How a Bill Becomes a Law.] The Bill, which became Public Law Number 108-299, extends the deadline by one year for the requirement that nationals of Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries traveling to the U.S. have biometric or machine-readable passports (MRPs) before October 26, 2004. The new date is now October 26, 2005. There was a concern that if this extension was not granted, there would be chaos and problems in international travel to the United States since most VWP countries are not equipped to convert their passports to MRPs.
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The law also extends by one year the deadline for installing equipment and software capable of processing machine-readable, tamper-resistant entry and exit documents and passports that contain biometric identifiers at all U.S. ports of entry. More information on the topic of extensions for MRPs for VWP nationals is in our April 16, 2004 MurthyBulletin article, Requested Extension for Biometrics of VWP Countries, available on MurthyDotCom.