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Re: Fooled again?



----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hughes"

> Yes they will be. And worse still, from October 26th any British visitor
to
> the US will HAVE to travel to London or Belfast to obtain a visa to enter
> the United States as the biometric passport demanded by the US is simply
> beyond the capability of the UK Government to introduce. And this will
> happen each time a Briton wishes to travel to the States.

Renew your passport now and you'll have 10 years to worry about it.  By the
time that runs out, maybe the UK government will have figured out how to
create a passport with "biometric identifiers."  What is that, anyway?
Height, weight and eye color?  I don't think we're asking them to encode
your DNA.

http://www.usembassy.org.uk/cons_web/biometric.htm
a.. Passports issued on or after October 26, 2004 must include a biometric
identifier. If your passport is issued prior to this date, provided it is an
individual machine-readable passport, you may continue to use the passport
to travel visa free even though it does not have the biometric identifier.

> For the majority of US residents, the equivalent would be that all US
> visitors to Britain would have to travel to either Washington or Seattle
to
> obtain a visa to travel to Britain.

Major exageration.  It's a looooong way from, say Houston or Chicago to
either Washington or Seattle.  Still, it seems like a couple more centers in
Scotland and the North of England would make it a lot easier for folks
living up North.

> I think it's an appallingly thought out move which will cause harm to the
> relationship between the people of America and Britain.

As long as you've got things in perspective.

Jim M