Upcoming Visa and Passport changes for US entry
 

From http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...UGS8DI7PL1.DTL


Upcoming passport and visa changes
Oct. 25: Travelers from 27 mostly European nations that do not need visas to enter the United States will be required to carry passports with tamper- proof digital photographs of themselves.

Jan. 1: American citizens re-entering this country after visits to Caribbean nations will be required to carry U.S. passports to get back in. Currently, a driver's license or birth certificate will do.

Oct. 26, 2006: Citizens of 27 nations who do not need visas to enter the United States will be required to carry machine-readable passports from their home countries, embedded with biometric data such as their digital fingerprints and iris scans. (This requirement has been postponed twice, most recently last week.)

Jan. 1, 2008: American citizens re-entering this country from Canada and Mexico will be required to carry U.S. passports.

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of State

I think I just replied to a similar post. From what I remember, from Oct 2006 I thought it would only be necessary for countries to start issuing biometric passports as opposed to passengers actually carrying them.
As I've said, this week's UK papers have been full of this. Apparently the cost of these passports could be up to £360. However, the cost willbe subsidised to £90 when the pasports are compulsory.
Personally there is no way I'm going to pay £360 (about $600) for the privilege of travelling to America.

You passed the common sense test. CONGRATS!

Those of us in the EU it seems our red maschine readable ones are still going to be accepted with the waiver prog. I guess the money to read those hughly expensive & not much saver bio metric ones just hasn`t grown on trees in the US either yet.....

I read in the press last week that visitors to the US will be photograped and fingerprinted when leaving the Country as well as entering sometime next year.

I think I read in the United forum that this is already happening at Seattle.

Does this mean that the US will have exit controls on all the border points?

I often wondered why the US, Canada and the UK do not check your passports before you leave. I wondered what was the point of having entry controls if the countries had no idea who departed within their alloted visa time limit. It seems like an illegal immigrants dream to me.

It happened to me at SFO in Feb, you use one of the many machines dotted around airside and collect a receipt (which nobody knows what to do with) when you are done

They have them at DTW too. No one actually told me that they are something I am supposed to go and play with, and I wonder just how many passengers just walk past them.

They are good, in a way - if your green visa waiver card somehow gets lots on its way from the airline to US Immigration you still have some proof. On the other hand, what's to stop people from punching in their details whilst waiting to board an internal flight, and pretending they have left?

I have that receipt, too. do i keep it for next US entry????

I am afraid this characterises so much of the procedures which put off both business and tourist visitors to the US. The expensive machines have been sold to the US Government in bulk by their manufacturers, they having convinced the government of the need for them in the all-conquering name of security, of course. The fact that the consequent procedures could be avoided by anyone wishing to is completely irrelevant.

This is already the case at some airports. Not yet at LAX.

Only if they failed to collect the stub of green visa waiver form. Of course you have no idea whether it made it to the "authorities" after being ripped out at checkin (or lounge or gate as applicable), so yes I'd keep it until next entry to US and then bin it.

As alluded to above, it can also be a tourist's nightmare, particularly when the airline employees forget or are too lazy to turn in the departure cards, or simply lose them.

On a return visit, the visitors are erroneously dubbed "former overstayers," and sometimes detained. :eek:

Once the US-VISIT system is fully operational, these will reconcile information against the APIS manifests submitted by the airline and check for anomalies.


It is the responsibility of the passenger to familiarize themselves with the local immigration regulations.