US rules out visas for old passport holders

The US Government has stopped issuing visas to Kenyans holding old generation passports just four days after Nairobi confirmed its intention to phase out the documents on August 31.

Kenyans can still secure visa appointments and interviews on the strength of old documents but approval will only be granted to e-passport holders, the US says through its Nairobi Embassy.

“.., we can only place a US visa in a new passport. You may make an appointment with your current passport but you will need to obtain an e-passport before we can issue a visa,” the Embassy said yesterday in twitter reply to visa seekers.

Nairobi, which now hosts a Category One Airport, had pledged to shift to e-Passport issuing system from September 1 2017 as part of its commitment to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards.

The new generation passport seekers are required to submit applications online (on the e-Citizen platform) which are then printed centrally in Nairobi.

Going by international practice, applying for a visa or entering another country normally requires a passport that, on average, is six month valid but the US asks for one year. The August 31 phase-out directive means no old generation passport can have a validity period of more than three months at the moment.

The news has caught many Kenyans flat-footed as majority of them who hold old passports that expire in 2022 have not bothered to start applying for the machine-readable documents. The complacency may have deepened in December when Deputy President William Ruto ordered the extension of old passports phase-out deadline to 2020 after records showed that only 400,000 out of more than 2.5 million Kenyans had managed to acquire the documents.

Away from the public glare however, the State has been preparing its workers for the big switchover with internal circular seen by Business Daily even indicating that civil servants have been in the know for some weeks now.

“Considering that the machine-readable passport will cease to be a valid travel document with effect from September 1, 2019, any machine-readable passport is already outside the six months validity period,” Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua says in the circular.

Last week, foreign affairs ministry issued a statement last week affirming that the old generation passports would all be phased out on August 31, 2019 as earlier communicated.