Wednesday 22 March 2006

Passport Fiasco

Apparently, us French people can't go to the US because of the inability of the French government to deliver biometric passports. I am not particularly surprised that a combination of government mis-management and strikes could make them miss the deadline. I mean, we're talking about a government here and the French one to boot.

But then, after reading the story, I thought: How does that work? I am French and I am reading this from the US, they never said anything at the border, even though my passport is clearly non-biometric! It turns out that the only people affected are the people who had their passports issued or renewed after the 26th October 2005 deadline. Mine was issued on 2nd February 2005 so I am immune to this requirement, for now.

Considering there is a new deadline set by the US government on 26th October 2006 that requires all passports to also have a microchip, what are the chances that the French government will miss that one as well?

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