Tuesday, May 17, 2011

How to Get a U.S. Passport

I’ve never been outside of the country, so I never had the need for a passport. You even need a passport to get from the U.S. to Canada. With a limited amount of time before the trip to Paris, this is how I got my passport.

To get a passport, you need to have your original birth certificate with a raised stamp. If you don’t have your original birth certificate, you’ll need to go to the county in which you were born and have them reprint it for a nominal fee. You can also have them send it to you by mail if you live far away from your birthplace.  There are applicable fees d
epending on how fast you need your passport. You need to have two separate checks to pay the two different departments.  This is what I took with me to the local post office:

•       My original birth certificate
•       A check made out to the post office for the $25 execution fee
•       A check made out to The Department of State for $212.72 to expedite the process

To protect my passport from people wanting to "borrow" it, I bought a passport protectorI could wear it inconspicuously underneath my shirt hung at my side. I looked at many different under-shirt passport holders, and I went with this one because it was cheap, lightweight and well-hidden.

After three weeks worth of waiting, and ten minutes at the post office, I finally got my passport!


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