Previous Story
Exemption to new travel requirement cited
|
Posted on Jul 06 2005
Passengers availing of the Guam visa waiver program to enter the CNMI’s neighboring island are not covered by the machine-readable passport requirement, according to Continental Airlines.
The carrier issued this statement in an advisory regarding a new requirement for all persons traveling under the U.S. visa waiver program to present a machine-readable passport to enter the United States—including Guam.
According to Continental’s advisory, failure to comply with the requirement will result in deportation of the passengers and a $3,300 fine per violation to the airlines.
The requirement, which took effect on June 26, 2005, applies to all nationalities eligible for the U.S. visa waiver program.
The countries are Australia, Andora, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom,
“[However], if a customer enters Guam using the Guam visa waiver program, a machine readable passport is not required,” according to Continental.
The nationalities eligible for the Guam visa waiver program are Australia, Brunei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nauri, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, and Samoa.
Only the following nationalities qualify for both the U.S. visa waiver program and the Guam visa waiver program: Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and United Kingdom.
A machine-readable passport has certain biographical data entered on the data page. Among its unique features are the two lines of printed machine-readable data that appear at the bottom of the page. Machine-readable passports can be read by scanning the two lines of data through special readers.
