Visa Waiver Program

Citizens from 27 countries can enter the U.S. as a visitor for business or pleasure for up to 90 days, without a visa. The 27 participating countries are Andorra, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Visitors arriving by air or sea must show a round-trip ticket, and visitors arriving by land must show sufficient funds to stay in the U.S. without working.

Beginning June 26, 2005, all visitors traveling to the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program must have a machine-readable passport. A machine-readable passport has two lines of text as letter, numbers, and chevrons (<<<) at the bottom of the personal information page.

Beginning October 26, 2005, all visitors traveling to the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program must use passports with digital photos. A digital photo is printed on the page, not a photo that is glued or laminated into the passport. You can still use a passport without a digital photo, if it was issued before October 26, 2005 and is machine-readable.

Beginning October 26, 2006, all visitors traveling to the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program must use e-Passports. These include an integrated computer chip capable of storing biographic information from the data page, a digital photograph, and other biographic information. You can still use a passport that is not an e-Passport, if it was issued before October 26, 2005 and is machine readable, or of it was issued between October 26, 2005 and October 25, 2006, and includes a digital photograph.

Although entering on the visa-waiver program eliminates the hassle of applying for a visitor's visa overseas, it has limitations. A visitor entering on the visa-waiver program is not eligible to change their status to another category (such as to a student visa or one of the work visas). Instead, they must leave the U.S. and apply for the visa abroad. A visa-waiver visitor is also prohibited from extending their stay beyond 90 days. Moreover, a visa-waiver visitor wishing to apply for a green card will be limited to applying from a U.S. consulate abroad (unless the visitor is an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen).