This story is from February 2, 2006

Visa dispute holds up French flow to US

Doreen Carvajal / Feb 2, 2006, 20:48 IST

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A visa crisis has created a bottleneck for French visitors going to the US and is throwing a wrench into the tourism industry.

PARIS: The delicate relationship between the United States and France has withstood freedom fries and frosty friendship, but now it may be facing a more serious test: Disappearing French tourists.
A visa crisis has created a bottleneck for French visitors going to the US and is throwing a wrench into the tourism industry.
An American law passed as an anti-terrorism measure in 2002 requires 27 mostly Western European countries to issue electronic passports for tourists and business travellers seeking to enter the US.
France, mired in a labour dispute over who will print the passports, failed to meet the October 26 deadline. So the law requires French citizens who have passports issued on October 26 or later to obtain visas.

On Monday, the consular section at the US embassy in Paris was the destination for a snaking line of almost 200 people in a grim, wintry mood despite dreams of family holidays in Dallas or conga lines and cocktails in Miami Beach.
Joseph Madai gripped a sheaf of papers against his chest in the cold and muttered that next year he would trade a Miami sojourn for Africa. Nathalie Debril staked a spot on the cold sidewalk, bleary-eyed from a flight from her home to get to the one US consular office that issues visas.

"All this for a week��s vacation,"her boyfriend, Laurent Lebecq, said with a huff. "We're not emigrating. We just want to travel to Dallas."
Intended to help American officials screen travellers from countries whose citizens are not required to have visas, the new documents, called e-passports, are embedded with a microchip containing passport data, as well as a digital photograph or biometric information.
France has not produced them because of a battle between the ministry of the interior and public labour unions, which are trying to prevent the government from using a private company to manufacture the documents.
The government vows that the new passports will be available by May, but in the meantime French citizens with recent passports must obtain visas, even if they are just passing through the US on a stopover to French territories.
NYT News Service

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