Beginning October 1, 2003, all citizens of countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) who wish to enter the U.S. without visa must present a machine-readable passport (MRP). VWP nationals who do not have MRPs must obtain a U.S. non-immigrant visa. This change affects only visa waiver travel. Persons traveling with a valid U.S. visa are not required to obtain MRPs. This change includes all categories of passports--tourist, diplomatic, and official. Bearers of diplomatic and official passports that are not machine-readable will need visas beginning October 1, 2003, when traveling to the United States.

Because MRPs typically have biodata for only one traveler in the machine-readable zone of the passport, families and groups should obtain an individual passport for each traveler, including infants.

A machine readable passport 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, meet the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization, Doc 9303, Part 1 Machine Readable Passports. OCR-B means the type is Optical Character Reader size B.

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