21 Countries Delay Machine Readable Passport Requirement
Posted Oct 03, 2003

Twenty-one visa waiver countries have requested and received a postponement of the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) requirement. The deadline for these countries is now October 26, 2004. We wrote about the deadline and the ability of most visa-waiver countries to request an extension of time in our September 19, 2003 MurthyBulletin article, Delay in Machine Readable Passport Requirement, available on MurthyDotCom.

The U.S. Secretary of State approved the extension request from: Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Therefore, individuals from these countries can continue to travel to the U.S. on the visa waiver program without machine-readable passports. Each country making the extension request had to certify that it is making progress toward availability of MRPs and that it is protecting against passport misuse.

Five countries did not request additional time, apparently because their citizens generally have MRPs. These countries are: Andorra, Brunei, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Slovenia. Belgium was not eligible for an extension because that was the only country required to have MRPs by May 2003, and citizens of Belgium must, therefore, have MRPs if they wish to enter the U.S. on the visa waiver program.

The extension, which is designed to be a one-time-only measure, is intended, in part, to avoid substantial disruption in travel by individuals from visa waiver countries. Presumably, these countries will be making a concerted effort to make MRPs available to their citizens prior to the extended deadline. Citizens from those countries should obtain the MRP, before the deadline if they wish to travel to the U.S. after October 26, 2004.