Are Dominican Passports Machine readable/digital?

The ones being issued now are state of the art. They even have a digiital fingerprint.

That will hurt a very profitable home business in the D.R. There are many people who rent Dominican passports with valid US visas. With a fine blade they simply remove the photo and replace it with the photo of the renter. They match up the age and away you go. If the passport is destroyed removing the photo, its reported lost or stolen and replaced with another cheap Dominican passport.
The rental price is $7,000 - $10,000 US prepaid. No refund if you run into a problem. After you land in N.Y. the passport is returned to the D.R. to be used by the next person a few months later.
It just shows you how ineffective US homeland security is. If they cannot stop hundreds of Dominicans entering the US illegally (by air and sea) every month how can they stop well financed groups from other parts of the world.
Airport Security can confiscate all the nail clippers they want, its only a show.

Thanks for the head's up!
I will be sure TSA reads this.

huh?

:devious:

debajoelsol said:

That will hurt a very profitable home business in the D.R. There are many people who rent Dominican passports with valid US visas. With a fine blade they simply remove the photo and replace it with the photo of the renter. They match up the age and away you go. If the passport is destroyed removing the photo, its reported lost or stolen and replaced with another cheap Dominican passport.
The rental price is $7,000 - $10,000 US prepaid. No refund if you run into a problem. After you land in N.Y. the passport is returned to the D.R. to be used by the next person a few months later.
It just shows you how ineffective US homeland security is. If they cannot stop hundreds of Dominicans entering the US illegally (by air and sea) every month how can they stop well financed groups from other parts of the world.
Airport Security can confiscate all the nail clippers they want, its only a show.

Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what airport you fly from/to, however, I can attest that Newark Liberty International has their INS inspectors utilize ALL their resources to prevent illegals from entering the US; they catch more fraudulent documents than many other major international airports. Customs, on the other hand, only check a very small number of cargo containers that come through their ports, this is very scary, they talk about security, but yet claim there's no money to procure the necessary resources to either x-ray containers or to determine if any contrabands exist in these containers. Lots of illegals (all nationalities) that have families in the states, usually buy "packs" which contain vital documents such as social security cards, birth certificates etc. price do vary in range and how badly do you really want them. Recently, there has been a few groups in the NY area that have been shut down by INS and the feds for making their own resident alien cards, social security cards, drivers' license and many others; lots of these folks are being charged with new laws that cover terrorism and federal felonies.

oh, and btw, TSA never confiscates my nail clippers.

debajoelsol said:

That will hurt a very profitable home business in the D.R. There are many people who rent Dominican passports with valid US visas. With a fine blade they simply remove the photo and replace it with the photo of the renter. They match up the age and away you go. If the passport is destroyed removing the photo, its reported lost or stolen and replaced with another cheap Dominican passport.
The rental price is $7,000 - $10,000 US prepaid. No refund if you run into a problem. After you land in N.Y. the passport is returned to the D.R. to be used by the next person a few months later.

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How can that be done? My US Visa has my photo printed on it. Actually the photo on the visa is clearer than the one on the passport, and you can't change that.

Pib. Very good question. I wasn't 100% sure so I phoned someone that we know that is in New York with an altered passport. He said that both photos were changed. The photo for the visa is just sealed under plastic, in his case it isn't an image that is printed on the plastic film that covers the visa. I don't know if the process has been changed to be more secure or if some or all of the US visas have photos.
I have here in Toronto a visitor from the D.R. She has the blue Dominican passport that has a photo and fingerprint. The Canadian Visitor Visa (Temporary Resident)does not have a photo although there is a little window to seal a photo under the visa.
I am going to try to contact someone in the D.R. to find out more info and will let you know.

My visa has a printed-on photo. You cannot change it, maybe tape a new photo on top, but that would stand out. The visa I had previous to this one is the same. The latest one is machine-readable.

SKY said:

The ones being issued now are state of the art. They even have a digiital fingerprint.

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I have a blue dominican passports issued on Septmber 2003 and was not digital/machine readable .

On November 28 2004 was repatriated by Hong Kong Immagation according to this new issue.

May I know when this digital/machine readable begin ?