Brits require special passports to enter US

Effective October 1, 2003, holders of British passports will be prohibited from entering the United States without a visa unless they can present a machine-readable passport (MRP) at the US port of entry, otherwise a non-immigrant visa is required. This includes all categories of passports: regular, diplomatic and official.

A MRP has biographical data entered on the data page according to international specifications. The size of the passport and photograph, and arrangement of data fields, especially the two lines of printed OCR-B machine readable data, must meet the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, Document 9303, Part One. Britain is one of a group of 27 countries, which include Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Switzerland among others, that are part of a Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) which enables citizens of those countries to travel to the US for tourism and business for 90 days or less without requiring a visa. However, this new policy requires that nationals of these countries change their passports to become machine readable or acquire a visa. Families and groups who want to enter the US under the VWP will need to obtain an individual passport for each traveller, including infants. MRPs generally have biodata for only one traveller in the machine-readable zone. As a result of this, families travelling as a unit may be denied visa-free entry into the US if the biodata for only one traveller is machine-readable.

No reason was provided for this new policy since no information was forthcoming from the US Embassy for TT. Instead, Newsday was advised to log on to the embassy’s website for information. When contacted, Phillip Everest, Communications Officer for the British High Commission, revealed that they had already been informed of the new policy. However, he could give no reason as to its initiation. Instead he noted that it was a matter for the US authorities. “I have no comment on why this new policy was implemented,” he stated in the telephone interview.  “It is their decision and they have their reasons.” When asked if this new policy would in any way affect relations between the US and the UK, Everest expressed his belief that it would not. “There is no question of the US and the UK not still being allies in light of this decision,” he maintained adding, “it is simply an change in policy.” Nonetheless, he did agree that it could cause some inconvenience for individuals who will be forced to acquire new machine-readable passports.  However, he noted that the British High Commission had already begun to issue MRPs. He believed that the US would allow persons a grace period to acquire the new passport.