US passport glitch misery

By STEVE HART travel editor

From October 1, more than 100,000 New Zealanders will not be allowed into the United States because their passports are not machine-readable - they cannot be scanned by a computer.

The rule applies equally to those visiting the US or in transit through any airport there.

If you try to enter an American airport without a machine-readable passport after the rule comes into force then you will be put on a plane home. It can be demeaning, upsetting and it's happening now.

Belgium had the new rule applied to its citizens on May 1 and scores of travellers have been caught out - they've obviously missed all the publicity about it since the changes were announced in February.

One example is Noelle Lhoist, who arrived in Los Angeles with her French partner and three children. Her passport, issued in 2000, was not machine-readable and she paid dearly.

Separated from her family, she was strip-searched, handcuffed, fingerprinted, held in a secure room for five hours and detained for a further 10 hours, then put on a plane back to Brussels.

Twelve days later, with a new passport in hand, she rejoined her family for a holiday in southern California - having paid for another flight.

"I would have happily got the right passport had I known about it," she told a Los Angeles Times reporter. "I'm not used to crying, but my tears were just coming and coming. I wasn't allowed to stand, use the phone or speak."

The requirement for machine-readable passports was included in the US homeland security laws passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and as those rules start to bite, New Zealanders are at risk of being caught out.

However, there's a quick way to check what type of New Zealand passport you have. If your passport is a machine-readable version then its number will begin with the letter X, L, N, or F or the letters AA. If it isn't, then the number will begin with the letter J or M.

People most likely to have older-style passports will have been issued them in places outside New Zealand, Sydney and London - the only places where machine-readable New Zealand passports are issued.

However, non machine-readable passports may have been issued in those three places too.

Airlines and travel agents need to help by warning their customers, especially as airlines delivering people to the US without the "proper documentation" are fined US$3300 for each offence.

For more information call the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs on 0800 225050.

* Journalist Dan Kaufman from Australia also found himself handcuffed, fingerprinted and strip-searched after arriving in LA without an I-visa, a special visa for journalists.

He says he had travelled to the US many times before and had never been stopped. But on his last visit he was put on the next available plane back home - following an 11-hour wait in a detention cell - after being refused a visa waiver.

Back in Australia he got a visa and returned to report on a software conference in Denver.

Passports