Americans will soon be able to renew passports online
cntraveler.com
cntraveler.com
My (US) wife continues to be in awe of the UK services compared to the US. I just wish the bus would come on time when I'm over there...
Welcome to US politics.
The know the roads are but because it is a physical infrastructure they don't pay attention.
Look at the Post Office issues recently, from your comment.
When I went to the CA DMV to get my real id, the person helping me was very pleasant and nice. I told her this was in remarkable contrast to my usual DMV experience, and she told me “we’re the new generation.”
There's probably some locations that are chronically busy, but I've had the luck to not use them.
I’ve known people that have worked at the DMV on a temporary basis and they would get in trouble every time they got work done because they made regular people look bad.
The idea is is that if you can not fire a person, department, agency or whatever but you’re forced to use them than the end result will often be bad.
Basically the exact same reasons that most people hate HOAs.
https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/outlays-GDP....
but in this case, they are not 'providing timely and cost-effective services', so is it really a myth?
If the belief is that there is no way that the government could ever provide good services, then the only solution seems to be to get rid of them and have someone else provide good services. The challenge I see with this solution is that private service providers have a very very strong incentive to get people to believe that this is the only solution: it's hard to compete with an effective monopoly.
If the belief is that they could provide good services, then we might see that maybe they don't provide good services for a number of reasons and try to improve them as well.
EXAMPLE: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/biden-cannot-fir...
> The challenge I see with this solution is that private service providers have a very very strong incentive to get people to believe that this is the only solution: it's hard to compete with an effective monopoly.
One political party has been devoted to handicapping government functions at every possible point for at least 40 years, and still some parts of the government continue to function well, so well that people don't even notice or think about them.
People notice the IRS--underfunded on purpose, and with intense lobbying to ensure it is illegal to provide a higher quality of service--and the DMV--underfunded in most states--but not anything else that works cost-effectively, like public schools or the USPS.
We were left with the impression that the USA just doesn’t care about improving these things. So it’s nice to see that the improvements are coming, they just took a while.
The anti-statism in the US turns readily into "if you interact with the state, it should be a miserable underfunded experience" rather than "since it has to happen, we're going to make it easy and convenient so as not to consume too much time, money and energy from our citizens"
(unless a libertarian wants to argue that the US should simply not issue passports at all and .. leave it up to private enterprise somehow?)
As an intern that knew my way around mail merges, outlook, and excel macros (around 2010), their minds were blown. But also they patted me on the head, gave me a phone, and asked me to physically call every DMV office in CA to ask them how many physical manuals they needed shipped to their office
Intuit already disgusts me with the tax shenanigans, can't imagine passports...
Nobody wants their passport fees to triple and it wouldn’t be fair. There also isn’t always an incentive to make things more efficient in the short term, so it’s not quite as simple in this case.
I won't take you up on your offer, but I'd recommend for us all to take this concept of a passport and peel it back to it's core and constituent parts. Then be a bit honest and see how we feel about the freedom we supposedly have to roam this Earth free from tyranny and fear.
But give them a government job enforcing anything, and they become the polar opposite somehow.
There may be a little of that in my home country, but nowhere near this extreme.
> So it’s nice to see that the improvements are coming, they just took a while.
This is one single improvement, long overdue. I wouldn't extrapolate to anything else.
I don't think our politicians actually care. They prefer to fight culture wars and pay lip service to real issues.
Agree with your sentiments about the current process and hopes for improvement.
USA is (more or less) a democracy so which party is in power at the time determines what "USA wants".
On one side there is a party that actively believes that "government is the problem", and does its best to prove that by deliberately kneecapping government agencies. Just look at the recent debate over the IRS. I mean, I don't like being taxed anymore than anyone else, but I think a professional, competent IRS is a clear necessity for funding the federal government.
On the other side there is a fear of getting branded "socialist", or just proposing things that will never come to pass, so what we are often left with is these Frankenstein "private-public" partnerships that are usually the worst of all possible worlds. E.g. you have the case where student loans are made by private institutions (or at least non-federal ones), but then then federal government guarantees them. So what we've built up is an incentive structure that makes college as expensive as possible, as student debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and even if it is discharged by the feds, it is the feds who are left holding the bag. Lenders and colleges are just incentivized to charge as much as possible because they are made whole no matter what.
Any new money will get spent on something flashy that will buy votes.
Had new passport in hand one week later. Regular service.
They can be fast if they want to.
Other countries might require presence or a signed affidavit from both parents when the child is actually flying out of the country.
My mom had custody but her bio dad and his wife kept kidnapping her and taking her across state lines.
At one point the dad was at the airport with a shotgun waiting for them. Police had to sneak my parents onto a plane.
Eventually my mom just walked with for several years at school never letting her out of her sight. That stopped at least one attempt, maybe more.
The US has interests in maintaining the status quo to keep the cheap labour flowing, gun exports, and drugs to maintain the social hierarchy.
If mexico managed to get rid a of a cartel member, the CIA would start working on making a new one
Doesn't solve the issue but you can see how long it'll take and impress old people by knowing where the bus is :)
"The UK will roll out new "iconic" blue passports for a post-Brexit Britain in March — but they will be produced in Poland by a French-Dutch company."
(The UK "blue" is basically black, whereas US passports are actually blue)
https://py.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/274/2017/0...
Though even postal items can arrive in a week as well, with luck.
For example if you do 1 passport a day you can't have a dedicated person handling for example issues caused by dual nationalities. If you do 1000 a day you can have someone who just handles that and knows exactly how to do it.
A tech example would be that Google knows exactly how to get a worker a visa as they do it all the time and they're very efficient at it. A little startup might have no idea what they're doing and would be very inefficient at it.
The larger the org the harder it is to change in big ways (at least in my experience)
Even with organizational overhead.
Which is more efficient: Distributing thousands of books by pallet in large, predictable quantities of pallets, to a limited number of Amazon warehouses or sending a single box of 20 books to thousands of bookstores?
There are also expedited processing options. The ones I saw last year weren't terribly expensive.
Edit: Fastest is 3 days, if you have emergency that qualifies. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/get-fas...
> "Currently, the process requires filling out a renewal application called DS-82, providing a passport-sized photo, and calculating fees, plus tossing the current passport and potentially other identification papers in the mail. “It’s scary to mail in your [old] passport, marriage certificate, and other documents and hope you’ll get them back,” Rathner says."
You need to print the forms, staple a proper photo to them, and mail all your crap via USPS. The only thing you can do online is print the form (you can fill in the data first, but that's not the hard part).
When I hear "you can already do everything online" I think click submit and be done. You can't currently do that. It's barely a step above picking up the forms at USPS (where you have to go anyway).
In the right sidebar:
Passport Forms
DS-82: Renewal Application
Fill Out Online
It has you fill out the forms electronically, but all that does is put the text into the field which you then have to print, staple your photo to, and mail.
You can't submit anything online.
Not having to mail in your current passport is huge though. I hate being without a passport for the 2-3 months it currently takes, even if I have no travel planned (and what if I did?).
I don't know for sure what it was before that, since the last time I renewed was 10 years before that.
But being without a passport for even 2 weeks makes me nervous. It's a security blanket to know I have it to make last-minute international travel possible if necessary.
An online renewal where you don't have to send your old passport in and can keep it until your new arrives is a huge thing. (Granted, your old passport will probably become invalid at some point before you receive your new passport, but after it's actually been created. Still the time without a valid passport will be minimal).
I was actually amazed how efficient the system for passports was. I mailed in my old passport and a new photo, and in less than a week I had a brand new passport arrive in the mail. The process was actually pleasantly painless for me.
> Sec. 4. Agency Actions to Improve Customer Experience. (a) The Secretary of State shall design and deliver a new online passport renewal experience that does not require any physical documents to be mailed.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...
The Canadian government should abolish the requirement to provide references to renew a passport. It's pointless and creates a burden for people who are not extroverts with dozens of friends.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
Your photos also need to have the name of the studio stamped and signed in the back.
Government suspects fraud? Call the references (they are generally licensed professions). Suspect the photo? Call the studio or send someone down.
It’s just traceability for the key claims in the application and biometric data.
I ended up having to drive to El Paso, which was the only passport office that was open in the entire United States! I had to wait until a few days before my flight. There were people from all over staying in a hotel waiting for their passport. They had standby flights to leave once they got it. I met people from California, Arizona, Michigan, New York, and Florida. It was totally ridiculous.
My kid's Irish passport costs €25 to renew. Her US passport is €130.
We wouldn't even bother with the US one except that it's illegal for her to enter the US on anything but a US passport. If we showed up with her Consular Report of Birth Abroad (which proves her US citizenship) could they legally refuse her entry to the US? I don't know.
But €130 to enter a country of which you're a citizen is annoying.
From what I recall reading on the internet (don't blame me if it's wrong), it's "illegal" but there's no actual penalty on the books. Apparently they scold you and give you a hard time, but let you pass through, since citizens are required to be allowed entry. (And I mean, consider what if you lost your passport during your trip?) I don't personally know anyone who's actually tried this so I have no idea how true it is in reality.
You lose your passport after boarding, or bring a certificate of naturalization, birth certificate, etc. that proves your citizenship. Or in the parent's case, try with the "Consular Report of Birth Abroad". I have no idea if the US accepts that, but it seems to me it should, since it proves citizenship which implies that person can't be denied entry.
The problem being discussed is the price of US passports, not trying to figure out how to enter the US without a passport that you've paid for.
Wouldn't surprise me if "look at me I'm white and speak with American south accent" might have gotten a charismatic enough individual on a plane to the US at some point after not having a passport for whatever reason, on some unscrupulous airline.
Edit: per below, unscrupulous was a poor word choice. I should have used a whatever word means "imposing low level of scrutiny."
I'm unsure about this, but from what I've gathered, airlines can bring people to the border without verifying travel documents. The only caveat is they have to be willing to transport that person back if they're not admitted. And IIRC this can happen even if that person has a visa etc., since not every valid entry document guarantees admission, so it's not like carriers would know the admission result prior to the passenger's boarding anyway.
Assuming the above is correct, what this implies to me is that—if an airline was willing to (say) take a deposit or something from a passenger to cover their cost of return, or if they were willing to (for whatever reason) foot the bill themselves—then they could totally let a passenger without valid documentation on board. The only thing that stands in their way of doing this would be their internal corporate policies, really. Unless there's an actual law implying otherwise that I'm unaware of, which is possible.
Actually, there is. They can deny you entry, which means you get put on the next flight back.
Not sure if that qualifies as "penalty" in you mind or not, but if we start getting pendantic, "illegal" is not always "criminal", i.e. does not universally imply crime.
(a) They can't do that if you're a citizen; you have a right to enter regardless of whether you have a passport. Heck, there might not even be a place to return you to.
(b) That wouldn't be a "penalty" in the law regardless (and this has nothing to do with criminal vs. civil vs. "illegal" vs. whatever). That is, if you do prove your citizenship somehow, they cannot turn you back to penalize you for not having a passport—period.
The question is whether you can prove your identity (and thus citizenship) without a passport. There are lots of ways to do this, and it seems [1] that "A Certification of Report of Birth, issued to U.S. citizens who were born outside the U.S." is sufficient to prove citizenship in other cases, so it seems plausible that that's sufficient for entering the country too.
(I wouldn't be surprised if even a State ID would be sufficient for them to look up your citizenship info in practice, since they cannot deny you entry if they discover you're a citizen.)
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/42/435.407 (note that this section is NOT specifically for entering the US; I'm just providing it as an example of documents that adequately establish citizenship in other cases)
The CBP operates with virtual impunity at the border. It is illegal to record them, unlike basically any other officer in execution of his/her official duties. When I contacted immigration lawyers, I learned basically none of them are interested in bringing a suit against CBP for abuses, as it's an incredible long shot mission and hassle.
After several hours of interrogation, and waiting for what I believe is an HSI detective (DHS, but not CBP) I was finally allowed into the country, with a warning "we can cancel your passport." (LOL, CBP officers cannot do that) Interestingly that HSI detective found the whole thing totally uninteresting and I was sent on my way almost as fast as he got there.
On yet another occasion, CBP tossed me again in the holding area full of brown people, stuck a dog on me THAT DID NOT ALERT, and then wrote in their report that <I slightly paraphrase> "a dog sniffed his asshole and alerted" after which I was strip-searched (intimately), cuffed, chained booked, tossed in an actual imprisonment cell and then loaded up in a prisoner transport van and dragged through hospitals (multiple of them, until they could find one with a corrupt enough doctor) for 16 hours while nurses and doctors in on their scam treated me like I was some drug trafficker. The Assistant United States Attorney was notified and she and her ilk piled on the fuckery, signing off on a fraudulent warrant authorizing my "internal examination." When their investigation came up with nothing, they dumped me back at the border, without any apology and presumably without removing me from their shit-list, which plagues me every time I enter the country.
If you are on a certain "shit-list" of CBP, they will fuck with you to no end, and there is very little you can do about it. The constitution is "suspended" at the border and half-suspended anywhere 100 miles adjacent. I tried to explain I still have some rights as a citizen, and the CBP Officer said "well I'm about to show you my rights" before strip-searching me. Seriously, what are you going to do? You can't record their actions, and what you can get through FOIA is minimal. Their agents lie on the reports, so whatever they write is worth about as much as a piece of toilet paper. When I tell these stories most people laugh, ask me what I must have been doing wrong, or say it's all in the course of securing the border. Sadly things are not likely to change, and in fact only seem to be getting worse.
Have US citizens been denied entry? I don't know, I just know as a normal looking and sounding white guy American I myself have had a CBP officer try to deny me entry, and I can't imagine what it would be like if you're a US citizen who only speaks spanish and looks hella indigenous. Maybe then you're lucky enough to get in, only to be finger raped [0] at the direction of CBP officers on a warrantless fishing expedition for a cavity search. If I were a betting man people who were denied entry probably did the same thing I did, which is contact a lawyer and find out you have basically no options, deal with your reality in whatever way you can and then move on with your life.
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
> I was finally allowed into the country
With regards to the discussion here, note that you weren't actually denied entry, regardless of how the officer may have phrased it to you verbally. Your permission to enter was withheld for some time and you were given a (very) hard time (as I mentioned can happen in my initial comment), but eventually allowed to go through. If you were actually denied entry, you would've been (say) placed on the next flight back, or left at the airport to figure your way out, or something like that—not taken in for interrogation and eventually let in.
(Obviously what they did to you sounds horrible; I'm not questioning that here. I'm just clarifying that, for the sake of the original discussion and the OP, this this was not a denial of entry, and is of course also unrelated to lack a passport.)
Even saying "passports are €130 but you can enter with proof of citizenship" would be better - it just seems bizarre to say "any citizen must be able to enter the US" and "but you MUST have a passport" and then "but not really, though we'll be super annoyed with you" as a policy.
If you look at it in terms of per trip, and you're only planning on traveling twice for the duration of the passport's validity, then yes. Even still, $55 is a <5% increase on the cost of a cross-Atlantic trip. Maybe I'm just jaded by a dysfunctional political system such that this seems like a relatively small inconvenience to me (as far as government dealings go). :)
> Even saying "passports are €130 but you can enter with proof of citizenship" would be better - it just seems bizarre to say "any citizen must be able to enter the US" and "but you MUST have a passport" and then "but not really, though we'll be super annoyed with you" as a policy.
This seems unrelated to my comment (I'm certainly not saying what you suggest in this quote). Did you mean to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32609309?
"The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative requires U.S. citizens, age 16 and older, to present a valid, acceptable travel document, such as a passport, a U.S. passport card, a trusted traveler card (NEXUS, SENTRI, Global Entry or FAST/EXPRESS), a Permanent Resident Card or an enhanced driver’s license that denotes both identity and citizenship when entering the U.S. by land or sea. U.S. citizens under age 16 may present a birth certificate or alternative proof of citizenship when entering by land or sea. All travelers must have a passport book for international air travel."
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/guides/A5...
Edit: They can go by transatlantic cruise or a cargo ship, which takes about two weeks.
That’s $26 per year or $2/month.
I think the US government might see it as a thing that wealthier people use for travel abroad, and so feel justified in charging more for it.
You’re paying for all the thousands of State Department Employees, the IT, the passport book itself, etc.
It wouldn’t surprise me all in it costs that much.
They basically need to print it and bind it into a booklet. When you order one you have to provide a new photo and fingerprint scan, but that is sent digitally. All the other data they need they just take from the citizen registry database.
At the end of the day, 5 weeks standard, 2 weeks priority, and X days rushed are perfectly reasonable turnarounds for a process that only needs to be done once every ten years. Uploading my documents took <10 minutes and I wouldn't have needed it any faster. This is a far stretch from "terrible" and optimizing it for more capacity is probably a waste of resources.
But that’s the thing. You need a certain throughput, and it shouldn’t affect the wait time. If you get X passport applications per day, and you can only produce less than X per day, your wait times will keep increasing over time. So at the minimum you need the same amount of production capacity as you have applications, preferably a little bit more. Assuming this is the case, then there must be something else causing the delays. Sure, there can be a small queue due to fluctuating orders but surely not 5 weeks ?
So there are two possibilities: either it actually takes weeks to manufacture the document, which seems odd, or it only takes a couple of minutes but there is some reason it takes 5 weeks before production is started.
> Shipping times from DE/DC to CA are probably longer than coast-to-coast in the Netherlands, etc.
Shipping for pretty much everything in the Netherlands is next-day. But I see no reason why you have to ship from the other side of the country. You can run a big country as if it was a collection of small countries. Isn’t that kind of what US states are anyway ? You have 20 times the number of people as the Netherlands, why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ?
submissions and throughput fluctuate and the quoted times are obviously estimates based on what the government has decided is a reasonable expected value for their target opex spend given historic application rates. I don't see why it's surprising that they chose some target timeline and staffed accordingly.
> why not have 20 production facilities spread around the country ?
because that's horribly inefficient and there's not point in spending resources to bring down a perfectly reasonable renewal time for a once-a-decade process
For example, in the UK, we have no national ID card. So, first-time passport applications and photos must be signed by someone else (the ‘countersignatory’) to prove the identity of the person applying.
(From GOV.UK) Your countersignatory must:
- have known you for at least 2 years
- be able to identify you, for example they’re a friend, neighbour or colleague (not just someone who knows you professionally)
- be ‘a person of good standing in their community’ or work in (or be retired from) a recognised profession (there is a accepted occupations for countersignatories)
The countersignatory signs one of you photos and application. As far I'm aware, there is no real way to verify the countersignatory.
How are brand new passports issued in other countries when identity is required?
They scan the photo you send in anyway, and then print it on the passport. So they don't actually need you to ever so carefully make sure the photo is the right size.
It's like the joke about printing a document, then taking a picture of it on a wooden table: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Web_0_0x2e_1
Just upload the info, upload a digital photo, and cut out all the paper.
Considering how expensive a passport is, there's something about the process that's very expensive, don't know what.
And even if it didn't, it would cost perhaps $3B a year (because they last for 10 years). That's pocket change to the US government. Not to mention the savings from dropping the RealID program, which would be unnecessary.
A lot of services are paid for be user fees: Permits, Licenses, Inspections, Customs for commercial shipping, even Airport Security is paid for by surcharges on your ticket. Car License plates, Drivers Licenses, National Park entrance fees.
It's basically: Did you ask for it? Pay for it.
I'm trying to reconcile that with someone else asking for a $10k federal loan, and then me (or somebody who never asked to go to college at all) being the one to pay it for them (through inflation or taxes).
Anything to do with the government is beyond awful.
From a country that practically invented modern software, modern SaaS solutions, modern mobile apps, it's a total disgrace.
I had it cancelled and got a new one issued, but who knows how often just my photo ID is being used :S. And the fact that they have all the info from my passport.
LOL.
At this rate, the US will be like a modern country in no time.
Who knows, maybe things are finally starting to catch up?