Has anyone in the USA gotten a passport lately ? I won a trip to Mexico so I need to get one for the first time and god what a joke. I leave July 12th so according to federal time that is quick.

No one really seems to know what the process is to get one I get different answers from every state or federal employee I ask.

It sounds like I need to go to a state run service center with a check for the amount of the passport. Then I pay them a fee via some other form of payment. Then they mail the form with my check to the feds. I also need a photo, and a birth certificate.
So far I got the birth certificate (16 dollars) and a photo (7.00 dollars) Now I need a check or something for 135 dollars maybe still not sure about that one. I haven't had checks for more than ten years I can't believe they can't put a spot for a credit card number on the form.

Any tips ? is this really this ridiculous ?

It's been many years since I got my passport, but your description of the steps so far seems about right. Yes, it's a bit ridiculous.

What's more ridiculous is that lead-time. You'd think that the people who organized the prize giveaway would have taken passports into consideration. It usually takes longer than that to get a passport. I think you can pay extra for a rush job, at least that's what I recall from when I got mine.

Here in California, most public libraries can deal with the passport forms.

There is an "expedite" fee you can pay and they'll turn it around in, they say, 2 to 3 weeks. Last time I did this it was about a week.

Here in Canada you can get a passport on the spot if you need one. Within 2 weeks for "quick" turn-around if you don't need one immediately, and normally I think within 4 weeks.

You just pick up a passport application form, fill it out, get two passport pictures which you can have taken at thousands of photographers, then bring that along with two other pieces of suitable ID to the passport counter at one of many federal offices. There's always at least one in every major municipality. Multiple forms of payment are accepted, including cash.

If you have more time to blow you can just send in everything by mail.

Sounds like in the US it's more complicated and convoluted than in Cuba. I suppose it's because the vast majority of the population never leave the country. Sort of like China or again, Cuba.

It isn't their fault that you don't already have a passport.

July 12 is almost the worst possible time, all things considered. It's too far away for you to really step on the gas and do the thing where you make an appointment and show up in person, yet it's too soon to just send everything in and see how it goes.

You should do expedited processing. If you believe their processing time web page, then expedited service takes 2-3 weeks.

If you're doing this via mail, then they don't take credit card numbers. You need a check or money order. If you're going in person, you can use a credit card, but it's well worth your time to avoid going in person (you make an appointment and you still wait for hours) and just follow the "expedited" procedures.

P.S. For future reference, there's no reason to pay somebody $7 to make "passport photos" for you. You can take a picture of yourself with any old camera against a vanilla white wall, and use Photoshop or whatever to size it properly before printing it. That's how I did my last passport photo.

Normal turnaround now is quoted at 10 days (mine took just five days last month), with a mere week being the norm. Expedited can deliver in 24 hours.

Almost civilized, except they expire every five years (instead of ten).

Cheers

Look up the rules on passport photos though. You don't want them to reject the photo because you're grinning or you're too far etc...

For the UK, there are several options:

If it is your first adult passport then it is 6 weeks since you need an interview.
Regular postal application is up to 3 weeks.
Checked post office application is up to 2 weeks.
Turning up at a passport office is up to 1 week.
Turning up at a passport office and paying extra is within 24 hours.

Current adult passports are 10 years.

Short story about my last application for a passport. I'm a dual citizen (Finland/USA). This time around it was time for a new Finnish passport. The passport had expired, and since the new one was to be a biometric passport I needed to apply in person (due to constraints at work I could not travel to New York City before the expiration date).

So I gather up the required paperwork, including my old passport, certified check and proof of having completed my national service. After I submit the paper to the clerk who oddly seems quite concerned that my old passport was expired I wait for about 20 minutes in a small waiting room. The clerk then returns and tells me that my application will have to be forwarded to Helsinki, as it appears that I'm no longer a Finnish citizen since I had let my passport expire!

At this point I went into a mild rage! She started to mumble something about providing proof that I had resided in Finland. Now mind you I had just given her my proof that I had completed my national service, which of course must be completed in Finland! After I pointed this out to her, she then wanted proof that I had held a Finnish passport prior to the old one I had just presented to her! At this point I just told her listen, just send the application to Helsinki and let them take care of it. So I stormed out quite frustrated and slightly worried that I had just lost my citizenship!!

A week later I get an e-mail from her that she had gotten the reply from Helsinki. The application had been approved. Two weeks later a new passport arrived at my front door, with it a letter stating in no uncertain terms that I am and always was a Finnish citizen, with a note that this letter was also sent to the consulate in New York. Hopefully, next time I renew it won't be such an ordeal!

BTW: here is the fee schedule for Finland with processing times:
==========
Fees:
Method of delivery Processing time Fee

Passport

Standard About one week 46 €
Fast track 1–3 days 60 €
Express* 1 day 80 €
Temporary passport**Issued on the spot 80 €

I once surprised someone with a trip to Paris, only to find out her passport had expired the month before. I spent a whole day in the London passport office waiting about and getting talked down to, not an experience I would ever want to repeat to be honest.

I also find the cost of passports quite unbelievable, and the new bio metric thing I have in mine doesn't really speed things up at all, when we flew back from Austria I got side lined as I had a new passport, and Nicola made it through before me with her older one. Bloody stupid.

I would always use a checking service if they offer it there, here in the UK you can pay a couple of extra pounds for someone to check the form and photo over before they send it off for you, seems to really help speed things up.

Cheers

Cris.

As far as a check goes, just get a cashiers check from your bank. Very easy.

Google is your friend.

Passport Acceptance Facility Search Page. Some of them will take walk-ins and others will require an appointment. Call first.

This is all fresh because I just got a passport for my 4 month old. She's making her first international trip in 2 weeks.

I've been to the London passport office and found it was fine. Book an appointment over the phone the day before. Turn up in the morning. Wait for my number. Give them the documents and form I filled in at home. Went to work. Came back at the end of the day to pick up my new passport.


Most of the time they don't even check my passport. The few times that they have, they've put it into a reader and then just gave it back to me. Its about the same time as the old non biometric passports.

I was on my mum's passport until I started to travel by myself. Not sure if you can still do that now.

Canadian passport rules require that the photos be provided by a professional photographer.

Yes, odd, that. I take my own photos for anything I can (eg. IDPs), but not for passports.

Cheers

I would definitely go the expedited route. Fortunately, you won't be dealing with the passport madness that went on two summers ago.

In the summer of '07, I had to get a new passport so I could go on my honeymoon. I started the process in February of that year for a trip in the beginning of July. I figured it would be plenty of time, because while the typical lead time should be 6-8 weeks, that summer they were warning of 12-16 weeks. That was the year they started requiring passports for Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico (I believe), and it was clear that the passport office simply could not handle it. At the time, I actually worked a block and a half away from the main US passport office in DC, and from April through August, the entire day there were 10 to 200 people lined up outside.

Well, like I said, I started the process in February, and as of June 15th I still didn't have a passport. It got to the point where we had to call our local congressman and have him do something about it, which is eventually what worked.

So there I was, about two days before my wedding, driving out about 30 miles in rush hour traffic to pick up my passport at the UPS substation it was located in, because instead of simply holding it at the passport office where I could have picked it up on my lunch break, they decided to mail it. I had no way of knowing if it would be delivered to my house before the weekend, so I had to go pick it up in person.

Of course, I didn't tell my wife until after we were married and on our honeymoon

Crazy! You could do a much better job than any professional simply because you might bother to take many more pictures until you've got one that you like best. Unless they've got an airtight definition of a "professional photographer", you can probably claim that you, yourself, are a professional.

(The "professional photographers" who take most passport photos are low-paid clerks with what used to be a dual-lens Polaroid camera that made two shots at once. Now, even that's all gone digital. Fuji will sell you a $575 point-and-shoot with a dye-sub printer as an all-in-one solution.)

Replacement UK passport at a consulate: $279 (£140). I know because mine was stolen from a locker in Sydney. Luckily I had my birth certificate and other paperwork with me, and had knew a professional there who had known me for 2+ years, so was able to use the normal paperwork to replace it without too much hassle.

The favourite method for passport-type photos in Australia is to get it done "manually" at a post office or shop. I searched out a Photo-Me booth because I have never had a photo rejected when using those properly (and it was cheaper!).

I am back in the UK now and have run my £2 credit checks to make sure nobody has been abusing the passport, Experian has come back first and thankfully is clean.

You need a stamp on the back of the phot...hers signature. I'd be surprised if they actually went to the trouble of looking up the company and seeing it if valid and actually a real professional photographer.

You must have been lucky, we had an appointment too they kept us waiting hours and hours to see them, in the end we say a few different people. We then had to wait in line for an hour to collect the new passport at the end of the day. Maybe they have changed things now, I think it was about 7 years ago now.

Cheers

Cris.

So I brought the application in today. I paid the extra tax for getting it expedited so I hope I will get it in time. I have never had one before so that means I had to do it in person. Even doing it in person you have to send a check, money order or whatever to the feds the processor fee can be paid by whatever they accept. The check thing gets even dumber because they will take a credit card if you go to a passport agency so just add another line to the application but whatever.

They do say you can take your own photo but I didn't want to take the chance that I would mess it up and get rejected when the time is so close. Seven dollars at walgreens was a bargin compared to fourteen at the county office.

I also learned that you can not apply for the passport at the same place you had print out your birth certificate. I don't know it that is really true but that's what they told me at the post office I submitted the application at.

http://rivieramaya.grandvelas.com/ Is the place I am staying at buy the way. Not the kind of place I would ever pick but it should be fun.

PS

If anyone else is like me and needs checks and banks at Wells Fargo you can go buy three for three dollars at the counter.

I see you are already have things in hand. I did this about 3 years ago. Post Office was where I took mine. They pretty much verify that you are you and have provided all the necessary paperwork.

Used to be that the photo provided was pasted directly into the passport - So the photos could only be provided by authorized persons. Now they get printed onto the page directly, so you are just providing an image to be scanned. It still has to meet the size requirements. I went to a professional photographer. One thing he had me do was tilt my eyeglasses a bit to eliminate a reflection.

I too had my application expedited, it doesn't really save much time over the standard service.

Yeah my wife already had one but needed to change the name on it. She didn't expedite because the place she went told her it would only take a few weeks for the regular service. We'll see who's get's here first. The whole expedite thing is probably a racket.

I am astonished by people not having passports. I didn't realise just how internalised some countries are! Think I'd been to 8 countries before I hit my teens, then travelled around another 15 or so by myself before I went to University:-)

And I just wouldn't be able to work without a passport - it lives in my jacket just in case I need to go abroad at short notice.

To be fair, the U.S. is a very big place. You can travel great distances and still be in the U.S. I imagine if the EU were to expand to include all of the U.K., Switzerland, and all of Eastern Europe, you'd find that far fewer Europeans would ever need or get passports.

Also, until very recently, Americans were able to travel to Canada, Mexico, and many Caribbean islands with nothing more than a driver's license.

I got my passport when I was in my teens, but it was years before getting a stamp in it despite frequent travel to Canada and the Caribbean.

But I get the impression that they don't. I think I've been to more places in the US than most Americans...

Yeah, but it was found that most Americans didn't know where Canada, Mexico, nor the Caribbean were. That's why there's a map on the last page of the new passports.

Canada is the blob with the image of the igloo and Terrance and Phillip on it, Mexico is the one with the guacamole dripping off the side and the Caribbean is denoted by the image of a cannabis leaf.

Canada and Mexico are both good for underage drinking and gambling. If you live within a couple hours of their borders, I imagine you know both countries quite well.

Being pedantic, the UK and parts of Eastern Europe are already full members of the EU, but not the Schengen Agreement which allows free movement between the member countries without passports. There are also members of the Schengen Agreement who aren't members of the EU - Norway and Switzerland are two.

That said, most people's first use of a passport will be to visit France to pick up beer, or a holiday to Spain.

Bruno, is this the image you are referring to?
http://home.arcor.de/xelnaga/america-sees-world.jpg

No that can't be the right one, the US isn't quite in the middle and is far too small

Cheers

Cris.

As is Canada. I've made numerous passport-free, multi-thousand mile road trips, in two different countries that each span a land mass larger than the entirety of western Europe. (33 states and 6 provinces -- I'm missing the far-north, the deep south, pieces of the eastern seaboard, and Hawaii.)

Country-count isn't a particularly great metric for how widely traveled you are, unless you live in an area of the world where it seems you can fit a dozen countries on the head of a pin.

OK, just because some of us live in places where taking the wrong turn on the motorway finds us in germany or belgium....

I think working in the IT industry makes one very cosmopolitan, or at least Americapolitan. I've visited about as many distinct cultures in the US (Bay Area/Austin, North-West, Philly/NY, New Orleans, Hawaii) as I have in continental Europe (Paris France, rural France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain), despite one being much closer-by than the other.

Peter

I agree, but the flip side of this coin is that while Canada and the US are far larger than Western Europe, there are far fewer distinct cultures.

That may be true. I have been to quite a few states but not close to all of them. I have never been to the black hills (Mount Rushmore) even though Minnesota boarders South Dakota. I am going there this summer though.

I didn't travel much as a kid due to my dad not wanting to go anywhere and being afraid to fly so now as an adult I just don't think about it. If I have extra money I would buy a new TV over taking a trip. That has changed after getting married because my wife has traveled a lot and wants to do more.

I live in northern Virginia, and the people 20 miles south of here consider themselves a different state. I guess it's how you define "culture"

But to be serious, the question at hand is how many places one has been, not cultures - which don't require passports - participated in.

I think that focussing on that particular distiction is perhaps somewhat (but not quite) unique to one particular locale..

Here's a comparison. http://goeurope.about.com/od/europeanmaps/l/bl-country-size-comparison-map.htm

One of my service men just got on the DHS's watchlist because he went to Mexico three times in one week and then went to Canada. They yanked his passport and won't give it back. We are getting seriously weird here....

Glad I don't live in the "land of the free" [sic].

Consider: New Orleans and Brooklyn are probably about as far apart culturally as exists in America, and they still share the same language, albeit significantly different accents, same pop culture, etc. The same distance in Europe takes you from Barcelona to Copenhagen, or London to Belgrade, or, uh, Milan to Minsk.

And San Diego to Boston is about the same distance as Lisbon to the northern tip of Norway, or London to Baghdad.

Hahaha - happened to me once. Was driving from Munich to visit Amsterdam for the weekend and found myself partying in Prague for 4 days. Excellent mistake to make.

(Oh, and didn't mean to come across all "I'm such a traveller, me", and I wasn't meaning to impugne the US. It was just very surprising to me, considering the direct connections from major US hubs to just about everywhere should make it easy to travel.)

Only if you live in one of the hub cities. Otherwise everywhere is twice as far away as it should be. Time wise and distance wise both. But mostly time wise.

Edit: It doesn't matter if I leave from Sacramento, Oakland or SF. Everywhere I've gone recently has taken two flights. The US air system suffers from an over abundance of "You can't get there from here!"

For what it's worth, my first trip abroad was to Mexico, while I was in college. No passport required at the time. My next trip abroad was to England while I was in graduate school. I was originally planning to go to California (from New Jersey), but found it cheaper to fly to London, and I had some friends there I wanted to see. This was my first ever requirement to have a passport.

(Annoyance: at the time I got my original passport, I had long hair and a goatee. I nuked all that a few years later, but passport photos last ten years. This made some airport immigration officers look at me funny, particularly in Canada. There's something about Canadian immigration. No other country seems to care that much about who shows up.)

Yeah, but there's one major difference:

In the same distance (and airfare) as you can get to dozens of cities with thousand year histories very different from your own and each other, I can only get to a handful of cities with histories longer than 250 years, most of which are really fairly similar to my own. That doesn't mean that New York, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, Charleston, etc. aren't interesting cities to visit, it just means that they're not as distinctly different; there's almost no draw to experience the culture: you pretty much have to want to go there for some specific reason.

That's why I usually fly Southwest. They don't use a hub and spoke system, but rather a point-to-point system. This results in a LOT more direct flights. Also, lucky for me, Phoenix is good airport for flying Southwest.

I use to absolutely despise Southwest. That whole cattle seating thing drove me crazy. Then, sometime in the last 10 years (maybe with the online check-in?), they started doing something right. It is now easier and less painful to fly SWA than any other airline. If I have a choice, I will fly SWA over any other airline unless I am going international.

And, if you don't live in one of those hub cities, the cost jumps up a couple hundred dollars per ticket, too. When people ask me if I miss living in Los Angeles, I tell them no, with two exceptions -- the friends I made there, and LAX.