E-Passports versus older Philippines passports – 31 October 2015 last day

Philippines passports have been gradually moving forward and going fully electronic, and from 31 October 2015 they will no longer accept the old passports at the airports. To travel after that date, Filipinos will need the new E-Passport.

The old green ones were literally hand-written inside. They were very easily falsified, and one wonders how many people got through with fake identities on them? Shudder to think! We’re in the electronic age now, and therefore the new passports are machine-readable with embedded microchips in them.

If anyone still has an old one, then you need to go to the DFA and get it renewed ASAP.

Requirements to get a Philippines passport? Not our area of expertise, but not difficult either. Read HERE

Important issues with Philippines passports – Expiry Dates and Visas

Expiry dates

Make sure that you have enough time left on the passport. This is not an Australian Immigration rule. It’s a general rule-of-thumb that most airlines expect of you, and they can refuse you travel if your passport will expire within 6 months. So be sure to update your passport in plenty of time.

Visas

• Your visa will be issued with an electronic link to the passport used in your Australian visa application. They dispensed with passport visa stickers years ago, and the visa grant letter is just a piece of paper. It helps to get you past the guard at the airport, but that’s pretty much it.
• A “visa” is NOT a sticker or a letter. It’s not something you can carry around. A visa is permission to travel to and to enter Australia, and it’s electronically recorded in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s database. When they scan your passport at the airport, they can see all the details of your visa.
• What that means is that if you update or change your passport, there will be no link to that passport and when they scan it at the airport they will not see that you have a visa. You will most certainly be turned away!

So if you do update your passport, you need to tell us ASAP. You should also do so in plenty of time. Don’t say “I have a new passport, and my flight is Friday” or you won’t make it! We will need a Form 929 completed, and we will need a clear colour copy of the new passport ID page. And we will need time to make sure that this is processed by the Embassy.