International Passport Renewal

[Corey-Mariya 14]

Hello Everyone

My wife will have to renew her international passport in abouit a year from now. Her Internal passport expired but her parents sent her propisca from russia. So do we have to travel to the embassy to renew her passport or can we do it by mail?

[1HappyGuy 45]

Contact the Russian embassy in Washington D.C. for advice.

[redglasses 1]

There is no such thing as an international passport.

If you are talking about her Russian passport, contact the Russian embassy in DC.

[slim 1,514]

Thanks for stopping by with the great info, redglasses. If you come back often enough, you'll note that there is such a thing as an international passport because in Russia, there's an internal passport (propiska) and an external passport (zagran) and it's referred to as an international passport more often than not to distinguish it from the internal one.

Once again, thanks for stopping by.

Corey, it'####### or miss right now with the embassies. Washington seems to want an in-person appointment, West Coast (either Seattle or San Fran) seems to allow mail ins. We're getting ready to renew my wife's INTERNATIONAL passport (for all our visitors - yes, there is such a thing) and we'll probably end up heading to D.C. to get it done. I'll let you know how it goes.

[mox 298]

There is no such thing as an international passport.

If you are talking about her Russian passport, contact the Russian embassy in DC.

If you're going to offer drive-through advice to up your post count, you should at least understand what you're talking about. All Russians have what is commonly refer to as an "internal" passport. It's basically a national identification card that looks a lot like a passport, including a primary identification page and lots of pages for stamps and other stuff. The internal passport is not good for travel outside Russia.

The counterpart to this is the Russian "international" passport. This is a completely separate passport, and is the document internationally recognized as a "passport."

More information about the Russian internal and international passports can be found here.

Anyway redglasses, welcome to the forum and let me know if I can help you with any other misconceptions.

@Corey: Slim's correct, last I knew San Francisco allows mail-ins. But call to make sure.

Edited December 29, 2009 by mox

[sanuginz 0]

We had the same issue. Went to the police station almost half the day and explained the situation with the police chief for like 3 hours. He drove a tricked out S-Class black mercedez. He eventually let us keep both passports the almost expired one and the new one because if they kept the old one the passport stamps could cause issue. He even started asking about how to get a US visa for himself... the only thing is we had to sign a form stating we will return the expired passport on next arrival. Maybe it will work for you... who knows.