US Passport for Infant - Checklist

[second stage 14]

Want to provide the checklist and timeline for applying a US Passport for an infant since we recently went thro' this with our kid.

Documents Needed:

1. Completed passport application - you can fill this online or by hand. If you do by hand, make sure to use a black pen
2. Evidence of child's US citizenship - we submitted original birth certificate, this will be returned separately after passport processing.
3. Evidence of child's relationship - the original birth certificate had both the parents names.
4. Child's recent color photograph - we took several passport sized photos with our camera at home and ordered prints at Walmart.
5. Parent's Identification - we carried our US Driver's Licenses.

Fees: $80(cash or check) made payable to Department of State and $25 for post office(this can be paid with credit card)

The process:

You can goto any acceptance facility but we decided to go to a post office. Make sure to call post offices around so you have an appointment for applying US passport. Usually they are booked up for several weeks. We called few and some were booked for 2-3 months but we ended up driving about 30 miles to the nearest one that was available.

Both parents have to be present while applying for an infant's passport otherwise if only one parent appears the other one must submit a notarized written statement.

Our appointment was at 11am we showed up a little early. The postal clerk called out our name, verified our documents, took photo copies of our Driver's License and made sure that my spouse's name was corrected(has to be a maiden name not the current name).

We took 3-4 different passport size photos and the postal clerk accepted only one of them letting us know that the others did not conform to the photo requirements(some had shots too close up etc) Otherwise it's $15 to take a photo at the post office.

The postal clerk then had us take an oath and then collected the fees and processed the application.

Timeline:

Nov 22, 2013: Application Submission at Post Office.

Nov 27, 2013: The $80 check was cashed.

Dec 10, 2013: Passport was mailed from Little Rock, AR.

Dec 14, 2013: Passport was received.

Dec XX, 2013: Still waiting on the original birth certificate.

Total time to receive the passport, 3 weeks and 1 day.

We were unable to track our application online and we registered for updates as well but glad to have received the passport in under a month.

[second stage 14]

Updated Timeline:

Timeline:

Nov 22, 2013: Application Submission at Post Office.

Nov 27, 2013: The $80 check was cashed.

Dec 10, 2013: Passport was mailed from Little Rock, AR.

Dec 14, 2013: Passport was received.

Dec 16, 2013: Original birth certificate received.

[TBoneTX 45,267]

*** One irrelevant post removed; this thread moved from main U.S. Citizenship forum to the "Passports, etc." subforum. ***