State Department wants to make it harder to get a passport

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

If you don’t want it to get even harder for a U.S. citizen to get a passport — now required for travel even to Canada or Mexico — you only have until Monday to let the State Department know. The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.

It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete.

It’s not clear from the supporting statement, statement of legal authorities, or regulatory assessment submitted by the State Department to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) why declining to discuss one’s siblings or to provide the phone number of your first supervisor when you were a teenager working at McDonalds would be a legitimate basis for denial of a passport to a U.S. citizen.

There’s more information in the Federal Register notice (also available here as a PDF) and from the Identity Project.

You can submit comments to the State Dept. online at Regulations.gov until midnight Eastern time on Monday, April 25, 2011. Go here, then click the “Submit a Comment” button at the upper right of the page. If that link doesn’t work for you, it’s probably a problem with the javascript used on the Regulations.gov website. There are alternate instructions for submitting comments by email here.

(Note that the proposed form itself was not published in the Federal Register. The Identity Project was eventually provided with a copy after requesting it from the Department of State, and posted it here.)

Here are the comments (PDF) being submitted by the Consumer Travel Alliance and other consumer, privacy, and civil liberties groups and individuals, if you would like to use it for ideas for comments of your own. (They’re also available in OpenOffice format for easier editing.)

Extra points to the person who gives the best answer in the comments to the question on the proposed form, “Please describe the circumstances of your birth including the names (as well as address and phone number, if available) of persons present or in attendance at your birth.”

http://www.consumertraveler.com/today/state-dept-wants-to-make-it-harder-to-get-a-passport/

So what's the form look like?

Sit down, and be assured it's no joke!

http://papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ds5513-proposed.pdf

[Harsh_77 718]

I dont know if this would work. Actually someone can sue the state dept and I am sure they would win.

As an immigrant after you are naturalized you have same right as any other citizen and if they ask one citizen different set of question and another a different set of question - its discrimination.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

My husband was the son of a travelling Minister. By the time he was a teenager they had lived in over 20 different places. He has absolutely no idea of many of the places where they lived and he is the eldest child. His parents are both deceased. He joined the army and travelled extensively through his military career. He has lived in 62 different places in his life. Only one of them was an international address that required a passport. So, how large is this application form - does it have enough room for 62 addresses even if my husband could remember each and every one of them? He has no idea who was present at his birth other than the doctor who signed the form and his mother. This is a ridiculous degree of information that is being requested that really has no value for the issuance of a passport - it is a means of security control and I seriously doubt US citizens will accept this. In fact my husband just stated that the FBI didn't require that degree of information from him when he received his top secret military clearance. Hey - there you go - anyone who receives a US passport with this application will automatically have top secret security clearance!

[Penguin_ie 5,996]

They are asking for the dates of the pre and post natal appointments when your mom was pregnant with you... I doubt she remembers, and I was kinda busy growing in her womb! That part is only for people born in the USA though, so foreign born USCs have it easier As to who attended the birth... I have a 14 months old daughter and don't remember the names of all the nurses at the birth!

[JimVaPhuong 4,863]

Do you have a link to the proposed form from a US government website, and not a watchdog group?

My understanding of those detailed background questions is that they only need to be answered if your birth was registered more than one year after you were born, or if you weren't born in a medical facility. In other words, if there could be any doubt as to the authenticity of your birth certificate then they want that detailed biographical information to confirm you were actually born in the United States. The questions are ludicrous, obviously, but the overwhelming majority of natural born US citizens wouldn't need to answer them.

[Harsh_77 718]

My husband was the son of a travelling Minister. By the time he was a teenager they had lived in over 20 different places. He has absolutely no idea of many of the places where they lived and he is the eldest child. His parents are both deceased. He joined the army and travelled extensively through his military career. He has lived in 62 different places in his life. Only one of them was an international address that required a passport. So, how large is this application form - does it have enough room for 62 addresses even if my husband could remember each and every one of them? He has no idea who was present at his birth other than the doctor who signed the form and his mother. This is a ridiculous degree of information that is being requested that really has no value for the issuance of a passport - it is a means of security control and I seriously doubt US citizens will accept this. In fact my husband just stated that the FBI didn't require that degree of information from him when he received his top secret military clearance. Hey - there you go - anyone who receives a US passport with this application will automatically have top secret security clearance!

wooohoooo.....Top Secret Clearance with passport.... I like it!!!!!

[Harsh_77 718]

Do you have a link to the proposed form from a US government website, and not a watchdog group?

My understanding of those detailed background questions is that they only need to be answered if your birth was registered more than one year after you were born, or if you weren't born in a medical facility. In other words, if there could be any doubt as to the authenticity of your birth certificate then they want that detailed biographical information to confirm you were actually born in the United States. The questions are ludicrous, obviously, but the overwhelming majority of natural born US citizens wouldn't need to answer them.

Well Jim, from the post Bob made thats exactly what I understood was there were going to be 2 types of form for passport and one was this and other was normal....

So your guess is good as mine who was going to fill which form to obtain a passport...

Some of the stuff they are asking is just crazy employeer, their name and contacts all the past add who was present at birth.

They had ample opportunity to check my background when they issued a visa to me, if you were getting a immigrant visa then they ask for police clearance from home country.

So this kinda forms are nuts.

[rin and john 71]

From yesterday's Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/orl-travel-senior-travel-050311,0,3940361.column?track=rss

"Ed Perkins on Travel Senior Travel

May 3, 2011

You probably saw the flurry of publicity about the proposed new passport application -- a form almost impossible to complete without the aid of Ancestry.com and a private detective. Although the form is, in fact, a nightmare, the good news is that very few of you will ever have to deal with it. Nevertheless, even without the new form, getting your first passport can be tough, and it's getting tougher all the time. Unless you're absolutely sure you'll never want to leave the U.S. during the remainder of your lifetime, apply now.

The new form really is a nightmare -- out of Kafka by way of Dr Strangelove, a bureaucrat's dream. It asks for:

-- Name, date and place of birth, and citizenship for yourself, parents/stepparents, all siblings, and all children.

-- Street address, city, state, zip code, and time of residence every place you have lived since birth.

-- Company name, address, dates of employment, supervisor, and phone number for every place you have ever worked.

-- Name, address, and dates of attendance for every school you have ever attended.

-- And lots more even more obscure stuff if you weren't born in a hospital.

Could you fill out such a form completely and accurately? I certainly couldn't. When I was a kid, there were no such things as zip codes or area codes. And much of the information for the form may not even be available any longer.

As far as I can tell, however, that form will not become a new standard. A State Department spokesperson assured me that it would be used only in those rare cases where an applicant cannot produce the more typical documents, most notably a birth certificate from a U.S. hospital. The media frenzy seems to have been inspired more by shock value than by accuracy.

Nevertheless, you can't be sure you have what the passport agency needs until you apply. I suspect that if my wife were applying now, she would have to use the new form. She was born in a U.S. military hospital in the Philippines while her regular-army-officer father served on MacArthur's staff, but the birth certificate from that military hospital there didn't satisfy the agency. We had a really tough time finally digging up enough to make the agency happy, but it was a struggle.

A passport is now virtually a "must" for anyone who ever wants to fly anywhere outside the U.S. (to be fully accurate, anyone who wants to fly back into the U.S. after visiting any other country). If you drive to/from Canada, an enhanced driver's license from Michigan, New York, Vermont, or Washington will be enough. And if you drive or cruise to/from Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, or Mexico, you can use a passport card. Anything more and you'll need a regular passport.

Certainly, some of the media and the public severely overreacted to the new form. But the passport agency is at least partially responsible for the flap -- it published the new form in the Federal Register without any notation about the circumstances it might be used. And much of our press is understandably touchy about anything that involves personal privacy.

Presumably, this story has a happy ending. Very few, if any, of you will ever see the nightmare form in question. But the larger lesson remains that you need a passport for almost all foreign trips, that you may encounter unexpected obstacles when you first apply, and that the application process could take a lot longer than you'd expect. So unless you plan to stay home for the rest of your life, make sure you have a current passport. Even if your latest passport has expired, an old passport is usually enough to get you a new one without further hassle."

[Ironman140 45]

Wow nothing like big brother looking into your past.

Do they want to implant a chip in your body when passport is issued also ????

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

I read on one of the linked sites a post from a woman who said she already had to do something like this - which tells me a similar form is already in place. It also noted that the likelihood of having to do this is around 0.5%. It's possible that something similar already exists and we just don't know about it - and I don't see anyone complaining about the existing form. More information needed for me.

[Casprd 167]

That can't be real. I've lived about 20 different places in my life and held at least that many jobs. Some of those companies are out of business and I have drank way too much tequila to remember my direct supervisors name as anything other than "that ####### at company xxxxx".

My mother's address for the year before my birth? WTH. why would they need that and how would I know?

[Harsh_77 718]

Wow nothing like big brother looking into your past.

Do they want to implant a chip in your body when passport is issued also ????

lol.... if I let them plant a chip on me can I get away without filling out that form?????

[justashooter 430]

Do you have a link to the proposed form from a US government website, and not a watchdog group?

My understanding of those detailed background questions is that they only need to be answered if your birth was registered more than one year after you were born, or if you weren't born in a medical facility. In other words, if there could be any doubt as to the authenticity of your birth certificate then they want that detailed biographical information to confirm you were actually born in the United States. The questions are ludicrous, obviously, but the overwhelming majority of natural born US citizens wouldn't need to answer them.

sounds like this is designed to close loopholes that are not otherwise addressed, and so is reasonable.

[sara..... 371]

so is this for only new passports for those that have never had a passport or will it also apply to get a passport renewed? what ever the case it would be really hard for anyone to supply all of that

saraa

[Sunny123 44]

sounds like this is designed to close loopholes that are not otherwise addressed, and so is reasonable.

Reasonable?