1:30 P.M., EDT
Real Audio of Briefing
MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. A warm welcome also to journalists assembled in our New York Foreign Press Center. We are very pleased to be able to welcome for a briefing this afternoon Elaine Dezenski, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
The topic of today's briefing is the announcement on the Machine-Readable Passport Requirement Deadline for Visa Waiver Program Travelers. So for those from Visa Waiver Program countries, this is a very important announcement and I'm very pleased to see all of you here.
Assistant Secretary Dezenski will have an opening statement to make and after that, we'll be very happy to take your questions.
Elaine.
MS. DEZENSKI: Thank you very much. Good afternoon and I want to thank you for coming today. Before I begin, let me acknowledge that I have some colleagues here from the State Department who will be happy to assist as we get into the question-and-answer part of our discussion today.
We have what we think is pretty important news that we want to get out to many news venues and so we're looking for this opportunity today as a real partnership to be able to alert travelers to some changes that are coming up within the next couple of months.
The U.S. Government is deeply committed to working with our international partners to secure our borders, while continuing to welcome legitimate foreign travelers. We're all vulnerable in unique ways to the threats of terrorism and we are all engaged in a global campaign to defeat that terror -- a campaign that no single nation can wage on its own.
The U.S. Congress determined that we must implement certain passport security measures, including machine-readable passport requirements for Visa Waiver Program countries. The Department of Homeland Security has gone to great lengths to work with our international partners towards this requirement.
The original date the Congress set for Visa Waiver Program travelers to present a machine-readable passport for entry into the U.S. was October 1, 2003. At the request of 23 of the 27 Visa Waiver Program countries, the U.S. postponed that requirement until October 26, 2004. In order to further assist Visa Waiver Program travelers with this machine-readable passport requirement, the Department of Homeland Security announced an interim procedure that authorized our Customs and Border Protection officers to grant a one-time waiver for entry into the country for travelers without a machine-readable passport and at no charge to the traveler. And that policy has been in place since October 26, 2004.
We're here today to talk about a change to that program, that as of June 26, 2005, the Department will end this interim procedure on machine-readable passport requirements. This means that as of June 26, 2005, all travelers from the 27 Visa Waiver Program countries must have a machine-readable passport to enter the U.S. Beginning on that date, transportation carriers will be fined $3,300 per violation for transporting any Visa Waiver Program traveler to the U.S. without a machine-readable passport.
Similarly, Visa Waiver Program travelers arriving in the U.S. on that date without a machine-readable passport should not anticipate being granted one-time entry into the country. Make no mistake, this requirement will benefit travelers just as much as we think it will benefit homeland security because machine-readable passports will expedite the entrance process.
Machine-readable passports, or MRP's as we call them, have a sequence of lines that can be swiped by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers to quickly confirm that passport-holder's identity and to obtain other information about the holder typically found on a passport's inside cover. Swiping the passport allows our frontline officers to pull up the information needed to process legitimate travelers quickly. It also enables our officers at the border to focus more on identifying and interdicting potential threats.
As many of you know, nationals from Visa Waiver Program countries are allowed to apply for admission to the U.S. for 90 days or less as non-immigrant visitors, for business or for pleasure, without first obtaining a U.S. Non-Immigrant Visa. The 27 countries participating in this program are listed in the press release that we are issuing today, which is also available at the doors of this center.
There are more than 42,000 Visa Waiver Program (VWP) visitors entering the U.S. every day with machine-readable passports. And last year, more than 15 million Visa Waiver Program travelers entered the country with a machine-readable passport. We are pleased with these numbers. However, as many as 147 Visa Waiver Program travelers arrive each day without that MRP passport. The highest percentage of VWP travelers without machine-readable passports come from France, the UK, Italy, Norway and Japan. Now, it's important to point out that these are the same countries from which we have a significant number of travelers coming in, so it makes sense that these countries would have higher percentages of travelers without that machine-readable document.
We know that all the VWP countries are working very closely with us to communicate information about these new requirements to all of their citizens. We hope to see the number of travelers without machine-readable passports, reduced even more between now and June 26th, which is why we're embarking on a very aggressive communications campaign and we'll continue to work with our international partners to educate the public about this new requirement.
Thank you and I'm happy to answer some questions.
MR. DENIG: Let me remind you to please use the microphone and identify yourself and your news organization. All right. Let's start with Austria on the left there.
QUESTION: Edith Grunwald, Austrian Press Agency. I have a question to the fines. It says here: "Transportation carriers will be fined $3,300 per violation." Is it a violation to -- one violation to transport one -- for instance, if you have 10 persons on a plane with the wrong passport, they are fined 10 times?
MS. DEZENSKI: Right. That is, each person is considered one violation. So that fine would apply for each person.
MR. DENIG: Next question. Yes, sir. We'll go to Japan here on the left.
QUESTION: Kensuke Karube, Jiji Press, Japan. Do you have any information that all 27 countries could complete their work to prepare this passport?
MS. DEZENSKI: Well, I think each of these countries is issuing machine-readable passports. Where we get into some challenges is with folks who have older passports that may have been issued before that country started issuing MRP's. It's just a few, really. So we would have some folks with passports that are on the older side, but they're still using them to come in, even though their country is now issuing machine-readables.
Let me give you some context to that. Within the U.S., we've been issuing machine-readable passports since the early 1980s. Most of the Visa Waiver Program countries have been issuing machine-readable passports since the early 1990s. There are a couple who were a little bit later in the game, within the past five to eight years, but the majority have been doing this for quite some time.
So the target for this announcement is really those folks who have passports that have been issued quite a while ago and perhaps have not had a chance to get that updated because they haven't run the full cycle of that lifespan for that document.
MR. DENIG: Let’s go to the gentlemen in the front here.
QUESTION: Stefan Nicola, German News Agency, DPA. Hi. I have a question. Does this new deadline fiddle with the deadline October 26th, which as you know is the biometric deadline? And also, if somebody with an old passport would go to the -- to an office and renew this passport to make it machine-readable, would he have to, you know -- upgrade that again in October, you know, what's your take on that?
MS. DEZENSKI: Good questions. First, the two requirements are separate so there's really no implications for the October 26th deadline for biometric requirements, vis-à-vis what we're announcing today. The way that the statute reads for the October 26th biometric deadline is that if you have a machine-readable passport issued before that date, you do not need to obtain a new passport until the lifecycle of that document is completed. So you would not have to go back and obtain a new one.
MR. DENIG: Yes, sir. The man in the middle.
QUESTION: My name is Tony Kujawa with the Washington File. In your remarks, you mentioned a bit about some of the numbers of travelers who have machine-readable passports and I just wanted to ask you -- since October 26, 2004, what percentage of Visa Waiver Program travelers attempting to enter the United States under the program did not have machine-readable passports?
MS. DEZENSKI: Sure. Actually, the numbers that I gave to you were for that six-month period so I think I mentioned that the average is about 147 travelers coming in per day from Visa Waiver countries without a machine-readable document. That's about .35 percent of the total of the Visa Waiver population coming into the country. So it's a very small percentage, but the reality is that 147 people is still too many and we want to make sure that we get that number as close to zero as possible.
MR. DENIG: Elaine, in a way that answer answers the previous question, which is how confident are we that countries will be in a position to have issued enough machine-readable passports. If we're down to 147 persons coming daily without machine-readable passports, it sounds like the countries are pretty close to their target.
MS. DEZENSKI: That's right. We're talking about a fairly small percentage, and each Visa Waiver country has the mechanisms in place to issue a machine-readable passport so it's not an issue there, it's just getting that small group of people who are using older documents that have not been updated.
MR. DENIG: Back to Austria.
QUESTION: My question to this, I think I remember that there was a discussion about the program with children because very young children are usually registered in the passport of the parents or the mother or the father or both. So does a young child also need an own machine-readable passport?
MS. DEZENSKI: The answer to that is yes, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the requirement is more broadly that each child has a passport. So it would follow that those passports also need to be machine-readable.
MR. DENIG: Japan in the back.
QUESTION: My name is Yukio Kashiyama, Sankei, Japanese Newspaper. I want to make sure -- Japan's Government did not issue, usually, the machine-readable passport. So I don't have this kind of passport. Now, the Japanese Government does issue machine-readable passports. But for some reason, some Japanese people have the passport which is not a machine-readable passport. Would be able to use the old passport to enter to this country? However, if he or she has visa, that's okay? I want to make sure.
MS. DEZENSKI: That's right. You have two options. You can either obtain a new passport that has the machine-readable function or you can certainly apply for a visa.
QUESTION: Okay. My second question is, apart from this machine-readable passport issue, if what I remember, you are asking the Visa Waiver countries to develop new passports, like biometric passports or something like that. And what I remember, is that the deadline is also this fall -- October sometime. However, I think at present the Japanese Government is now starting to introduce new passport. Probably, Japan could not meet that deadline. Probably the Japanese Government says that we could finish it by the end of March of 2006 or something. So do you plan to extend the deadline, or do you have any other option?
MS. DEZENSKI: Well, today, we're really focused on the machine-readable deadline. There is another pending deadline with regard to biometric passports and we're actively working with the State Department and with Congress to assess what the options are. We know there are some countries that do not plan to be in compliance with that requirement and I think we're very well aware of the progress that's been made across the board. We think our Visa Waiver partners have done a very good job in terms of moving the ball forward, but there are technical issues, operational issues and other issues that need to be worked through. So I think you'll be hearing more about that over the next month or two.
MR. DENIG: Just to reassure the Japanese journalist a little bit. My understanding is that the only passports that will have to have the biometrics are new ones issued from October 26th on. So any government that is already issuing biometric passports will be, by definition, in good shape.
MS. DEZENSKI: That's right and that's an important clarification that we're not asking folks to go out after October 26th and necessarily get a new passport. If it's machine-readable and still valid, we'll take it. But there are certain countries who expect to be issuing biometric passports by that date or are already doing so and we applaud those efforts and hope that they'll continue with all speed.
QUESTION: My name is Kazama, Japanese Television Fuji. I understand some 60 million Americans have U.S. passports. And I'm just wondering how many of them have machine-readable passports.
MS. DEZENSKI: That's a great question. The State Department might have more on that. I can tell you that it's about 23 percent of the American population that currently holds a passport. We have had the initial machine-readable documents for many, many years. I'm not sure if we have a specific number on that, but we can certainly take that one before I get back.
MS. SHANNON: I don't really have an exact figure available on the percentage of machine-readable passports in the hands of U.S. citizens. However, we can tell you that we have been issuing, as Elaine mentioned, machine-readable passports since early 1980s. We have been issuing pretty much solely machine-readable passports with digitized photos printed on them since 2002. Even passports issued abroad, except those issued in emergency circumstances and with a limited validity, are machine-readable at present. So it's a high percentage of U.S. passports that are machine-readable.
MR. DENIG: Any further questions?
(No response.)
In that case, I'm going to thank Assistant Secretary Dezenski very much.
MS. DEZENSKI: Thank you.
MR. DENIG: And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation.
