Is a new "machine readable" passport needed when travelling to US

Hi there,

Folks are travelling to New York soon and their passports are due for renewal next year. Another family member said that their passports won't suffice and that they will need the new machine readable ones if travelling to the US. Does anyone know if this is the case. I don't have a recent passport and have travelled to New York a few time but the last time was in 06 so things may have changed since then.....Any advice as always is greatly appreciated!

How old are their passports? -- machine-readable ones have been issued for quite a few years. My current and previous one (issued in 1994) were machine readable. The "machine readable" aspect -- if you look at a recent passport -- is just the OCR writing at the bottom of the picture page in the passport.

Two other things to bear in mind: for going to the US you will have problems with passports that are about to expire shortly ... although more than six months away will definitely be fine. Also, there are new rules in effect from 12-Jan-2009 about advance passenger information to be provided to US immigrations before you travel. Your airline website will probably have the details.

All the info you need can be found at [broken link removed]

Thanks a million for the responses!