Americans Can Now Renew Passports Online 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The State Department announced Wednesday that its online renewal system is now fully operational, after testing in pilot programs, and available to adult passport holders whose passport has expired within the past five years or will expire in the coming year. It is not available for the renewal of children's passports, for first-time passport applicants for renewal applicants who live outside the United States or for expedited applications. "By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. The department said it estimated that about 5 million Americans would be able to use this service a year. In 2023, it processed 24 million passports, about 40% of which were renewals.
Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing said the department hoped to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children's passports. "This is not going to be the last thing that we do," she told reporters. "We want to see how this goes and then we'll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years." You can renew your passport at www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.
Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing said the department hoped to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children's passports. "This is not going to be the last thing that we do," she told reporters. "We want to see how this goes and then we'll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years." You can renew your passport at www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.
UK 2006 (Score:3)
Re:UK 2006 (Score:4, Funny)
Truly, you Brits live in a futuristic paradise.
Re:UK 2006 (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, no - does this mean we will get hard prison sentences for tweets in 18 years?
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Welcome to the UK, 2006.
But you still have to send your old passport back by snail-mail.
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Maybe in Canada in 2106.
We still can't do that. We also can't renew our passport without sending the old one by mail. Which means we can be a couple weeks/months without a passport. And no, we are not allowed to have 2 passports with different expiration dates.
The only alternative is to pay for expedited renewal, which requires waiting in line in a passport office. A lot of people also need to drive 1-2 hours to get to such an office to begin with.
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You're right, that does sound like something the left would do.
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Wow, they're doing it right before and election and right after 10-30 million illegals entered the country. Isn't that odd timing?
You're right, that does sound like something the left would do.
1. They've been doing this in beta for a long while now. It just had limited slots available every morning.
2. You need to have a valid passport already. This is just for renewals. How does that change anything for these folks?
3. Where the hell are you getting, "right after 10-30 million illegals entered the country?" AFAICT, it's more like 10-20 million unauthorized immigrants IN TOTAL in the US [^1]
[^1] Refs:
https://www.pewresearch.org/sh... [pewresearch.org]
https://cis.org/Report/Estimat... [cis.org]
https://www.migrationpolicy.or... [migrationpolicy.org]
Fingerprints... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For my non-US, non-UK passport, they wanted my finger prints. Can't do that without being present in person.
That's a requirement in every country but only the first time you get a biometric passport issued. I.e. nothing to do with renewing a US passport issued in the past 10 years which is what the news article is about.
Not sure why you even mentioned non-US/non-UK passport. The US government has nothing to do with that.
"Try being less of an uggo, Uggo." (Score:2)
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Great, now an AI can reject me because my head is too blurry. Look, that's just how my head is, man.
Obligatory Futurama [youtube.com].
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Every time I come off a cruise the facial rec flags me and I have to have an agent visually look at my passport. Sucks getting older and going from no glasses to progressive lenses.
Why So Stupid? (Score:3)
```
You are aware that we will cancel the passport you are renewing after you submit your application. You cannot use it for international travel.
```
"We will take eight weeks to get around to printing and mailing the replacement but we will immediately cancel your current passport so don't plan any unanticipated emergency travel."
Canceled upon mailing - sure, that's reasonable. Canceled upon application? Only a government could come up with a stupid idea like that.
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"We will take eight weeks to get around to printing and mailing the replacement but we will immediately cancel your current passport so don't plan any unanticipated emergency travel."
Renewing by mail you have always had to send in your current passport, so it's always been this way.
Re: (Score:2)
"We will take eight weeks to get around to printing and mailing the replacement but we will immediately cancel your current passport so don't plan any unanticipated emergency travel."
Renewing by mail you have always had to send in your current passport, so it's always been this way.
And only our government would insist on keeping this practice alive in the digital age.
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Would you rather they invalidate your passport at some random time when they are ready to mail it, potentially while you are traveling?
I'd rather they studied ways to do it that make sense today, rather than rolling with the "You just hand it over and we mail you a new one" methods of the past. Most official documents have either an overlap period of a few days to allow for mailing both ways, you receive one, you ship the other back, the older one gets destroyed / filed somewhere in a dusty room. Why stick with the gap method in the 21st century?
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Literally no passport in the world has an overlap period as there are international treaties that prohibit that from occurring. Virtually every country invalidates passports on application, and most countries require passports to be active for 6-9 months past the estimate date of travel. There are complex international rules around this.
The UK comically even tried to bypass these rules by making their passports valid for 10 years and 6 months to allow for the renewal period so people could travel up to the
Re: Why So Stupid? (Score:2)
No doubt they want to cut the corners off or guarantee that itâ(TM)s been taken out of circulation. They donâ(TM)t want you to have two valid passports.
BTW, I did actually have two UK passports because I used to travel a lot to countries that required visas. It took some effort to get and they donâ(TM)t really publicise that this is possible, or even have instructions on the application forms how to do it. They both expired literally a couple of months apart, so I applied to renew the firs
Re: Why So Stupid? (Score:2)
So you should be only a few days without passport. And you donâ(TM)t have to send the new passport back instantly. So if you want to go on holiday tomorrow when you receive the message, you keep the old passport until you return from holiday.
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I renewed my passport online a couple weeks ago. Had the new passport six days after they confirmed receipt of payment. Old one is in a drawer; I did not have to send it in.
Will try it out (Score:2)
The 80s (Score:3)
I remember the good old days when you'd walk into a US Embassy, they'd say: "US citizen?"
Then they'd usher you into an office with the consul. He'd have a chat with you at his desk, then hand fill out the passport right there in front of you and then hand it to you same day.
Nowadays they won't even answer the phone. They make you wait for months, they make you pay extra, and they talk to you through a 10 inch bullet proof / blast proof window.
Easy? (Score:1)
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It uses login.gov - I don't recall whether setting up the login.gov account required id.me or anything else.
Re: Easy? (Score:1)
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To be fair they're still gonna snap your photo both on the way out and the way back in no matter how you got your passport.
I used this during beta, and it's great (Score:2)
Back in July, when they were still only accepting a limited number of submissions per day. Had my kid take a headshot of me with my phone. Everything else was just info I had or could copy from my recently-expired one. Saved the $35 I always had to pay the post office before. And I had my passport in my hand 12 days after I hit "submit."
Of course, now that they're opening it up to everyone, and presumably not limiting daily submissions, maybe processing time will go up.
Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:2)
The rest of the world has had this for a decade or more
Misleading headline (Score:1)
A few Americans will be allowed to renew online. I canâ(TM)t since Iâ(TM)m required to present myself at a sheriffâ(TM)s office about thirty miles away. Also, the pictures are very hard to get right, and someone said when they were in the beta a pic from an iPhone wonâ(TM)t work because they require no digital processing.
This only helps the people that already had an easy path to renew. With the new Obama rules that make it more difficult to get one or renew, this doesnâ(TM)t really
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About half or renewals eligible based on the stats from 2023 - 24 million passports, 40% renewals = 9.6 million. 5 million or so eligible. The rest are going to be children or some certain cases. Admittedly, I don't know what the (I'm assuming?) edge case is that requires presenting to a sheriff for a renewal - but that can be me just being out of the loop on it.