It’s Happy Hour at the Balas Bar at the Fort Young Hotel in Roseau, Commonwealth of Dominica. I’m sitting here enjoying a glass of Kubuli, the locally brewed beer, and talking to an old friend from the United States.
My friend—who gave up his US citizenship some years ago—is here in Dominica to renew his passport. He acquired it a number of years ago under Dominica’s economic citizenship program, which for a minimum fee of US$75,000 will provide qualified and properly vetted applicants Dominican citizenship and passport.
Until 2006, all Dominican passports were literally handwritten. But in 2006, under pressure from the United States and the EU, the government of Dominica purchased the equipment necessary to manufacture machine-readable passports.
Now, the Commonwealth of Dominica has imposed a deadline of June 30 for persons who are using the old passports to convert to the new ones. After that date, the old passports will no longer be usable as travel documents. The deadline applies even if the old passport hasn’t yet expired.
It’s unfortunate that Dominica is being bullied by U.S. and EU busybodies. But it’s serious about the deadline, and if you have a Dominican passport, you need to renew it immediately, as processing times are lengthening as all Dominican citizens who wish to travel apply for the new machine-readable document.
