My U.S. passport expires in September so I’ve been looking at renewal options.
The State Department has an online renewal system that they’re offering to a limited number of lucky taxpayers every day. I was excited about this because it doesn’t require mailing in the old passport. I would thus be able to keep using my old passport while waiting for the new one. That assumption turned out to be incorrect:
Only slightly discouraged, I thought “well, at least it will be quicker because the mailing time will be cut out.” That was also wrong, wrong, wrong:
An online application will result in one’s current passport being immediately invalidated and the new one not being sent out for up to 8 weeks. A mail-in application, on the other hand, can result in a new passport after about 3 weeks (if one pays for “expedited” service).
Given that our borders are effectively open to anyone without documents who wants to collect four generations of welfare, I can’t figure out why the Feds persist in pretending that the border is tightly controlled and, therefore, that taxpayers must jump through hoops to keep their documents current. A friend’s U.S.-born wife couldn’t get on a plane to Ireland, for example, because her passport was a few months out of date. When we returned from Portugal to the Newark Airport, they CBP has 2-3 officers processing passports from multiple jumbo jets, thus resulting in an epic line. It would have been faster to fly into Mexico and walk across the border. During the hour-ish wait (my Global Entry status wasn’t useful due to the fact that we had the kids with us and they’re not set up on the program), I wondered why the U.S. checks commercial airline passengers with U.S. passports. The passports were checked three times prior to departure by different groups of qualified personnel in Portugal working in three different parts of the airport (front counter check-in; immigration border; gate). Why couldn’t we just be waved in? Why is it a problem to admit a U.S. passport holder whose passport was just checked and stamped by a Portuguese immigration officer? If there is some additional information they want they could ask the airline to collect it or ask the Portuguese to collect it (at a tiny fraction of the cost of paying a U.S. government worker).
I’m also wondering about the simpler question of why, if the process is entirely online and they don’t want the old passport mailed in, there must be a gap in passport availability. Why would it complicate matters for the government to allow the use of the old passport through about 90 days after the issuance of the new one? (this would account for a taxpayer leaving on an extended trip just before the new passport arrives)
In case you were not aware, you cannot travel to many countries without at least 3 months from the return date before passport expiry. This can be an expensive thing to find out at the airport.
In-person renewal only takes 24h, but must be done by appointment, and the appointment cannot be booked sooner than 10 or so days in most large cities.
The processing of US passports is one of the many harlequinades that the US government offers its citizens (for a fee). The value of paying for “expedited” service is questionable; from my experience (albeit limited because I have done it just a few times), the processing time is more dependent on “prevailing conditions” than on paying the fee. European passports are renewed very fast, even when done in NYC. It took less than three weeks to get my EU passport back in 2023 at the consulate. It should be noted that all EU passports are processed in Europe. According to the information on the site of the French consulate in NYC, renewal time is 3-4 weeks. I believe that renewing a passport in Europe takes no more than a couple of days.
https://newyork.consulfrance.org/comment-obtenir-un-passeport-ou-une-carte-d-identite
It is not clear to me what is the purpose of screening people who have arrived on a plane from Europe and have already been screened there. Why not have an American official doing whatever needs to be done at the embarking gate (perhaps it is a function that cannot be delegated to foreign officials)? Then you could arrive in the US and just go through customs.
Wow, this is very surprising. I remember I sometimes had to have two passports to travel to EU: Expired passport with current EU visa and a valid passport without visa. I still own all my old passports with visas, stamps etc. My citizenship is Russian. I thought Russian bureaucracy is the worst in the world. Now I am not so sure. Why do you guys tolerate American bureaucracy?