Friday 6 May 2016

Getting into the USA!

Headlines in several of today's papers reveal the news that it's now impossible to get into America with an old passport that doesn't have a microchip embedded.
This seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to people trying to board planes going to the USA! They were refused!
The fact is that we were all sent emails from the USA authorities proclaiming the new rules to us. It should not have been a surprise !
When I got my mail telling me my Esta had been cancelled I was thrown into a panic but several friends told me that my new passport did have the required chip. And so it has. I checked!
I have no plans to cross the Atlantic any time soon but I was relieved to find that I could if I wanted to despite all the queuing this involves!
Getting off the ship, standing in a very long line waiting to be admitted is a test of endurance only relieved by being visited by sniffer dogs!
Springer spaniels looking much like one of my previous dogs are very welcome during a yawningly boring process.
I felt sorry for those people booked on flights to New York who were refused their seats but if they had wifi they should have been informed a couple of months ago!
In this security conscious world having the right paperwork is an essential to all travelling I'm afraid! It's the very small price we all pay to try to keep the world safe!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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