Congress set a deadline of October 26, 2004 for all 27 visa waiver countries to issue machine-readable passports with biometric technology for their citizens to be able to visit the United States.  In recent weeks, it has become apparent to the government that these 27 countries, which have agreed to use the technology in their passports, will not have the technology in place by the deadline.  The Bush administration has therefore requested that Congress extend the deadline until October 2006.

On April 21, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the House Judiciary Committee to request the deadline extension.  He informed Congress that failure to extend the deadline would result in a 70 percent workload increase for the already overworked consular visa staff.  Powell also noted that this increased workload would mean extra costs and extended wait times, which could adversely affect US tourism and business.

“It is not likely that any of the Visa Waiver Program countries will produce 100% biometric passports by the October 2004 deadline set by Congress in the Border Security Act, which is why we are asking Congress to extend or waive that deadline for VWP countries,” he stated in an Op-Ed column in the Wall Street Journal the day he testified.

One day earlier, on April 20, 2004, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia introduced S.2324, the Visa Waiver Program Compliance Amendments of 2004, in order to extend the deadline for the visa waiver countries.  The bill would amend the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act to require immigrants applying for visas under the visa waiver program by November 30, 2006 to have a machine-readable passport with embedded biometric data.

The text of this bill can be found at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_bills&docid=f:s2324is.txt.pdf.