Some time ago the US authorities decided that people from a number of countries travelling to the USA for general business or tourist purposes would be required to have either a visa or a machine-readable passport as from 1 October 2003.

Today the US authorities have notified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that this has been changed. Norwegian tourists and businesspeople will continue to be able to travel to the USA with hand-written passports without a visa until 26 October 2004.

People travelling to the USA after this date will have to have a visa or a machine-readable passport.