Passport information

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gentle123

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55
Hi,

Does anyone know how long your irish passport must be in date before travelling to the usa? I am going to the USA in january and my passport is due for renewal in april 2006. Will i need to get a new one now? Thanks !!!!
 
I'm pretty sure that it must be valid for 6 months longer than the intended visit (e.g. 6 months from the planned return date).
 
Or maybe not ... see [broken link removed]. Looks like you should be OK with the existing passport but make sure so that you don't get any nasty surprises!
 
I rang the immigration office in Dublin airport with this particular query about 6 months ago and they said the only requirement was that it was in date on your return flight.
 
I assumed that the worry here was with how US immigration rather than Irish immigration might deal with this matter!
 
I would definately make enquiries as i too thought it had to be valid fr 6 months after you return after they tightened up security after 9/11. Definately check with US immigration of if in doubt I would err on the side of caution and renew!
 
ClubMan said:
I assumed that the worry here was with how US immigration rather than Irish immigration might deal with this matter!
Click to expand...

It was the US Immigration that I rang, they are based in Dublin airport.
 
It has to be machine readable just bring it to the passport office and get them to check it. But i have heard it is the new type passport not sure how true getting my mams checked next week so i will let you know what happens
 
Fo what it's worth.

I asked this information of a US immigration official while going through Shannon last week, as I will be travelling to Boston in Feb and my passport expires in April. She told me that the only requirement is that the passport is in date when I return home.
 
PINK said:
It has to be machine readable just bring it to the passport office and get them to check it. But i have heard it is the new type passport not sure how true getting my mams checked next week so i will let you know what happens
Click to expand...
If it's not handwritten and has the OCR character strip (with all the ">>>>>" characters) then it's machine readable.
 
When I rang the passport to check if it was machine readable (she asked me questions as answered in the previous post) she also asked me to check it was valid for 6 months, even though the US Embassey says this is not a requirment for Ireland. Personally I wouldn't tale the risk.
 
One other thing, when you are leaving the USA, your suitcases have to be checked in unlocked so that US Customs can open them if they want to. If they are locked they will open them anyway.

When we got home last summer, two of our cases had a note inside them saying that they had been opened by Customs.

HINT: if you don't want your case opened then it is a good idea not to bring back stacks of poker chips in your luggage. We had 5-6 ccases and the ones with the poker chips were the ones opened. Maybe they couldn't identify the spherical shaped objects from the x-ray. On the plus side I'm more than happy that they inspected anything that they regarded as suspicious.


Murt
 
Murt10 said:
HINT: if you don't want your case opened then it is a good idea not to bring back stacks of poker chips in your luggage. We had 5-6 ccases and the ones with the poker chips were the ones opened. Maybe they couldn't identify the spherical shaped objects from the x-ray. On the plus side I'm more than happy that they inspected anything that they regarded as suspicious.
Click to expand...

If it's any consolation we travel to/from and interally in the States quite a bit and it's not an uncommon occurance to find one of those notes when we arrive at the hotel.
 
when travelling to the US we used the TSA approved locks on our cases. This way when security need to open our luggage, they can do without breaking the locks.
 
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