A Briggs Passport & Visa Expeditors

If you want to order one of the new a passport cards, get a passport application — it’s called a DS 11 and follow the instructions. On the new applications that will be available by February 1, 2008, you will find an option for applying for a passport card which you will select to order a passport card. Alternatively, you can order the traditional passport book with the same application.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

REMINDER:

Starting Jan. 31, adult travelers re-entering the USA by land or via ferry or small boat must carry either a passport or a government-issued photo ID plus proof of citizenship such as a birth or naturalization certificate. …. The change here is that persons driving into the U.S. until Jan. 31st, can get in by just answering questions.

Children 18 and younger need only proof of citizenship.

Effective Jan. 31, 2008, U.S. and Canadian citizens (19 and older) will be required to present proof of citizenship, such as

1) a passport or

2) a birth certificate or naturalization certificate supported by a government issued photo ID, when entering the United States through land and sea ports of entry from Canada.

Children ages 18 and under are only required to present proof of citizenship (without ID), such as a birth certificate, naturalization certificate or passport.

If a birth certificate is presented, it must be a certified birth certificate issued by the city, county or state. A photocopy of a birth certificate will only be accepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) if the original has been sent to the Department of State in support of a passport application. In such case, the traveler must obtain and provide proof of passport application.

These changes are significant as compared to the current and long-standing policy that allows CBP officers to accept oral declarations of citizenship from U.S. and Canadian citizens seeking entry into the United States through a land or sea border. Effective Jan. 31, 2008, oral declarations will not be accepted.

All persons traveling by land or sea to Canada to take either a valid passport or a government issued birth certificate and photo ID beginning Jan. 31, 2008.

All persons traveling by air should be reminded to bring a passport. The passport requirement for air travelers entering the U.S. from Canada has been on the books since Jan. 8, 2007.

Please note that travelers holding NEXUS, SENTRI and FAST cards will continue to be accepted for cross-border travel.

Eventually, at an unspecified date by mid-2009, the Department of State will require passports, or soon-to-be announced passport alternatives, from ALL travelers at ALL points, including air, land and sea, within the Western Hemisphere.

Prior to the effective date, the State Department intends to make available a Passport Card, which is specifically designed for land and sea travel from neighboring countries. The primary advantages of the Passport Card are that it will be less expensive and smaller than a traditional passport.

In addition, several states including Washington, Vermont and New York are creating an Enhanced Driver_s License that will, according to the CBP, also fulfill the proof-of-citizenship requirement at land and sea borders. Further details of these alternative products are unknown.

However, CBP says that ample notice of the exact date of implementation will be provided to ensure travelers can obtain the appropriate documents.

Since passports are the gold standard for entering and exiting the country from all foreign destinations, ALL travelers, including those traveling by land or sea in the Western Hemisphere, should be encouraged to obtain, and travel with, a passport.

Specific documentation requirements for land, sea and air travel may be found at www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/vacation/ready_set_go/.

To learn more about NEXUS, SENTRI and FAST, visit www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/.

The State Department recommends that all persons obtain a passport for any international travel. If you need a passport or have questions, contact A Briggs. If you need an expedited passport, A Briggs can obtain one for you as quickly as one day.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Beginning January 31st, 2008, U.S. citizens will be required to show their birth certificates or other documents that prove citizenship, along with their driver’s licenses, to cross the border back into this country if they don’t have passports.

The modifications are step one closer to the new rules to tighten border security and require a passport or passcard to cross land borders. The State Department and Homeland Security have not issued the rules for the issuance of passport cards. The passport card will be issued to reduce the cost and complexity for residents in border states who cross the border regularly.

The State Department plans to begin processing applications for the wallet cards by the spring. The delays on the passport card and the stricter requirements at land border crossings are likely to cause traffic jams at ports of entry along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

Many people who regularly cross the border by showing a driver’s license and saying “yes” when Customs and Border Patrol agents ask if they are U.S. citizens are not aware of new rules.

300 million people cross the land borders annually. Congress moved back the deadline requiring passports or passport cards at all land borders until June 2009. Officials in charge of issuing passport cards announced plans for the driver’s license-like card in early 2006, and said the card would be ready for distribution by the end of that year. Now, almost two years later, the State Department is still working on the final regulations for the card, which is expected to cost $20 plus a $25 processing fee — about half of the $97 cost of a regular passport, making the smaller card a cheaper and easier alternative for many border residents.

Stay tuned and we’ll keep you informed. Meanwhile, our advice is apply for your passport now. If you need a rush pasport, you can obtain a passport as quickly as 24 hours.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Now the news media is ganging up on the State Department saying it overcharged citizens more than $100,000,000. It’s a long story, as they say, but the essence is that the $30 applicants pay to the acceptance agent at a post office or court house at the time they apply is twice as much as the actual cost of the process of accepting an application according to a government study.

Talking about the passport acceptance process Senator Byron Dorgan said, “This is not supposed to be a profit-making venture. They charge 30 bucks just for passing something across the counter.”

Well, we know what is involved in the process of accepting passport applications by the acceptance agent, and it can be very complex depending on the quality of the identifying documents presented by applicants when they apply.

Our passport expediting company belongs to an association, the National Association of Passport and Visa Services, and it made a statement in response to a question about this issue from a reporter. It’s statement sums up our feeling on the matter and is quoted in part in the following:
“Our firms work closely with all but two of the passport agencies that are open to the public. In the past year, our firms have submitted hundreds of thousands of applications in behalf of citizens, so we know Passport Services very well. The people that work there are dedicated, hard working public servants, and we have never seen any evidence of waste on their part.

“Acceptance agents provide a critical role by correctly identifying passport applicants. Sometimes that is relatively easy and other times it can be complex depending on the quality of identifying documents presented by the applicant when they appear before an acceptance agent to apply for a passport.

“We have never seen nor heard anything to suggest anyone in the passport issuance process is in any way intentionally overcharging applicants. We do not have access to any authoritative studies of internal operations of Passaport Services or acceptance agent opertions, so we cannot comment on the studies being quoted.

“However, it is ironic that this year in the face of skyrocketing demand, passport expediting firms turned away tens of thousands of Americans wanting to use their services because Pasport Services reduced the number of applications individual firms can submit. Our firms’ passport expediting services start at $65 and go up depending on how quickly the passport is needed. Our firms serve almost all of the major corporations in the U.S and all of the major travel companies and online booking agencies; and through their trade associations, they have collectively urged Passport Services to allow our individual companies to submit more applications.

“With the passport card coming on line soon, it is critical that Passport Services utilize the services of private passport service firms to help citizens who needs a passport or a passport card quickly.”

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

The Passing of the Passport Crisis

The Department of State announced on September 7th that it had “restored passport service to the standard six to eight week processing time.” We know now that they have, indeed, restored service back to normal, so we give you the following commentary from an “insider” in the passport and visa world.

The “passport crisis” now exits the stage of the media and Congress, but before we turn away, it is worthwhile to look back at how this “crisis” unfolded and then ended.

After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, Congress was understandably concerned about keeping dangerous people who do not belong here from entering the United States. One serious problem in border enforcement was that U.S. Customs officials at the border were required to re-admit U.S. citizens returning from Mexico, Canada and most countries in the Caribbean with only a driver’s license and a birth certificate.

That meant that customs agents at the border had to be able to recognize 6,000 different birth certificates, from various counties, cities and states that have been issued over the last 80 years. Not only were they difficult to authenticate as valid, they were sometimes frayed and hard to read, and unlike the new e passport, they could be created fraudulently with relative ease.

In December 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act. Among other things the law required that to re-enter the U.S., all citizens must have a passport or a passcard, a new, yet-to-be-issued credit card size version of the passport. Under this new law, instead of authenticating birth certificates, customs agents at the border need only scan a passport or passport card — not only more secure but much quicker.

The State and Homeland Security Departments decided to implement the law in phases with the first phase, implemented on January 23, 2007, requiring a passport for all air travel re-entry into the U.S. To forecast the increased passport demand expected as a result of the new law, the Department of State had earlier hired BearingPoint, a McLean, Virginia consulting firm with 17,000 employees, to study U. S. border crossing and international travel trends. BearingPoint made a forecast of expected passport demand under the new law and Passport Services planned accordingly.

The BearingPoint forecast was presciently accurate on the number of applications that would be received in the first year, but erred in not foreseeing the freight train of applications headed our way in the first few months after the new law’s implementation. Within a month of the January 23rd implementation, Passport Services, the agency of the State Department charged with issuing passports, had a huge national problem on its hands.

Thousand of citizens missed trips. Others had to wait in long, slow lines at passport offices and hundreds of thousands of applicants waited stressfully for months wondering if their passports would arrive in time for their trip abroad. They were understandably angry that it was taking as long as four months to get a passport. At one point, the backlog of unprocessed applications approached three million.

Applicants were calling members of Congress and complaining bitterly about the delays in issuing passports, and they made their unhappiness unknown to the State Department.
“It is unacceptable that American citizens were missing trips because the State Department did not fully anticipate the increase in passport applications and take appropriate action to increase processing resources,” said a letter signed by 56 senators. Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Lantos, said, “None of [the late passport issuances] should have been necessary; for lack of simple foresight, the Administration has placed tremendous strain on …the public…”

The media joined the chorus. “Market Watch,” an online newsletter published by Dow Jones, said, “Thanks, Maura Harty [Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs]. You’ve made my vacation and millions of other Americans’ the source of anxiety, frustration and disgust. The passport agency under your control regularly lies and provides misinformation.”

All this noise from Congress and the media notwithstanding, Passport Services got the job done well under the worst of circumstances and dug out of a hole that, in retrospect, realistically no one could have foreseen – there was just no way of knowing for sure how the demand for passports was going to be effected by the new law. And Passport Services did not lie or deliberately provide misinformation. Nothing like this level of passport demand had ever been encountered by the State Department in the history of our country. By the end of this year, the annual passport demand will have increased from 12 million to perhaps as many as 18 million.

When the problem slammed into Passport Services, the State Department management pulled out all the stops to meet the demand surge. They brought diplomats and passport adjudicators out of retirement. They redirected new Presidential Management Fellows from taking management positions in the government to processing passports. They vetted and hired hundreds of new passport processors and started the months-long training to qualify them as passport adjudicators.

Carefully adjudicating and issuing 18 million passports in one year is, by any measure, an extraordinary achievement. Every single applicant has to be checked to ensure they are, indeed, a citizen; that they are entitled to have a passport – for example, persons with arrears of $2,500 or more in child support payments are not entitled; and that persons applying are properly identified as the person they say they are.

The employees of our firm deal every business day with seven of Passport Services’ 14 regional offices. We watch Passport Services’ employees deal with the public, and I can testify that they gave – and give — their very best to accommodate every applicant. Watching the passport office at work reminds me of a hospital emergency room: every applicant expects immediate attention and resents having to wait.

Every day, we see citizens appear at regional passport agencies all over the country that need an emergency passport for a funeral, sick relative, sudden vacations or myriad other reasons. The employees at the passport agency do everything they can to help them, yet do so without ever compromising passport security by carelessly issuing a passport to someone who should not receive one.

One day, I walked on the street by the Washington Passport Agency and ran into an acquaintance who works at the Agency. He was taking a break from the long, intense days. We chatted and he spontaneously invited me to take a quick tour of the agency. I walked through and saw every person working as hard as any of the people in my own business. Over in one corner, I recognized the director of the Washington Passport Agency operating a machine that prints passports. I asked her why she was doing that, and she explained that the operator of the equipment was out that day and the job had to be done. She did not know I would be touring the agency and was surprised to see me, but there sat the top person filling in for an absentee. That’s the spirit that we taxpayers are getting at Passport Services.

And that is the spirit we encounter every day at Passport Services. I do not agree with the criticism of the agency personnel or its management.

They did an excellent job in the most difficult period of their history and now they are caught up and back to normal. The crisis is over. While we all regret the delays, I am proud of the job done by the Department of State and Passport Services, and I feel safer about our control over who is allowed into the United States of America.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

The requirement for having a passport or passcard for land and sea crossings into the U.S. has not yet been established as law. Everyone entering the U.S. by air must have a valid passport.

The government is talking about a date in mid-2008 to require a passport or passcard for entrance to the U.S. by land and sea, but we do not think it will be able to meet that date. Our expectation is that the requirement for having a passport or passcard for land and sea crossings into the U.S. will be implemented in the first six months of 2009, but certainly no later than June 30, 2009.

Meanwhile, until then, the government rules state you can enter the U.S. by land or sea with a state-issued photo I.D. and an original or certified copy of your birth certificate or a valid passport. If you are traveling by air and need an expedited passport, you can contact A Briggs for assistance.

If you are flying into the U.S., you must have a valid passport in your possession.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

The Canadian Travel Bureau of the Canadian Government is acknowledging that it is having problems issuing passports in a timely manner mostly because of the U.S. requirement to have a passport for air travel into and out of the U.S. It effects Canadians the same way it does U.S. citizens.

A Briggs is not able to obtain expedited passports from Canada.

Here is the article from the Canadian Government:

OTTAWA — Passport Canada is reporting continued long delays in processing mailed-in passport applications, despite a streamlined renewal process and hundreds of new employees.
And there is concern those delays will only get longer as the busy winter travel season approaches.
Officials blame a glut of new applicants for the delays, as demand for the documents continues to grow dramatically.
It now takes a minimum of six weeks to get a passport through the mail; two weeks longer than the agency’s benchmark of four weeks.

And that doesn’t include the time it takes to get applications and documents through Canada Post.

Passport Canada spokesman Fabien Lengelle says many more people have applied for passports in the past six months than applied within the same period last year.

“The reason we have delays is that we have a very, very high demand,” Lengelle said.
In October 2006, Passport Canada was issuing about 13,000 passports a day.

By late last spring that number had reached 21,000.

Since the start of April,. the beginning of the fiscal year, the agency has issued 2.2 million passports, a 42-per-cent increase from the same period in 2006-2007 when just 1.5 million were issued.

In June, then-foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay announced measures to speed up the processing of passport applications, including a simplified renewal process.
At the time, there was a backlog of roughly 170,000 applications.

Since then, Passport Canada has hired nearly 700 new employees, raising the number of passport officers and clerks to the equivalent of more than 2,600 full-time personnel.
Agency officials won’t divulge gthe size of the current backlog, arguing that the number fluctuates from day-to-day.

“(Backlog) is not a very accurate measure,” said Lengelle.

“Demand is the true driver here.”

The new renewal process, which came into effect Aug. 15, allows Canadians to renew their passports without getting guarantors, as long as their current passport is less than a year from expiry and has never been lost or stolen.

Traditionally, the busiest time of year for Passport Canada is the period from Nov. 1 through the end of March.

The agency is preparing for a further upswing in demand, but acknowledges delays could lengthen despite its best efforts.

“It all depends on demand,” said Lengelle.

“If demand goes above capacity, then we will have (further) delays,” he added.

“Passport Canada is doing everything it can to raise its capacity to a level where we will be able to meet demand over the coming months.”

The agency has been able to maintain a two-week timetable for processing applications delivered in person at passport offices.

As well, Canadians who can apply in person, are willing to pay more and who can prove they will be travelling sooner, can get a passport within 24 hours on an urgent basis, or through Passport Canada’s ‘express’ service.

But that doesn’t help the thousands of Canadians who have no choice but to use the mail system to obtain travel documents.

Demand for passports has increased dramatically since the United States imposed rules requiring them for air travellers. Similar rules are expected to be in place as early as next summer for land travel across the U.S. border.

In the United States, demand also peaked earlier this year from Americans seeking passports, causing significant disruptions to some people’s summer travel plans.

But the State Department announced last month it had worked through a massive backlog of passport applications and that its processing times were back to normal after months of major delays.

However, the normal waiting period for a standard passport application in the U.S. is six to eight weeks - three weeks for expedited service. U.S. officials deal with 17 million passport applications annually.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

It’s a small achievement, but it is just the first of thousands of automatic passport readers at borders around the world.

The idea is to replace immigration officers at the border. You would simply scan your own passport and it checks your facial features and your iris to ascertain if the passport holder is the same person appearing at the border. Sort of like checking yourself out at Walmart.

It’ll be faster and safer. Another benefit of technology. Also, it may take a few hours longer to issue an expedited passports when these passports are issued by all countries.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

It’s a small achievement, but it is just the first of thousands of automatic passport readers at borders around the world.

The idea is to replace immigration officers at the border. You would simply scan your own passport and it checks your facial features and your iris to ascertain if the passport holder is the same person appearing at the border. Sort of like checking yourself out at Walmart.

It’ll be faster and safer. Another benefit of technology. Also, it may take a few hours longer to issue an expedited passports when these passports are issued by all countries.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a visa and check the requirements for entry.

It’s no surprise to us that Passport Services, the agency of the State Department, has gone far over its budget. But before you jump to criticize them as Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. did (he blamed it on “incompetence and poor planning”), remember that no one knew how this was going to roll out — our country has never done anything like this in its history. And it was Congress that created this law requiring everyone to have a passport in just a couple of years from the time the law was passed.

In fact, Passport Services predicted with relative accuracy the demand for the year, it just didn’t correctly envision that so many of their 18 million estimated applicants would apply at the same time. We know the rules and the landscape of passports very well, and neither we nor anyone else in the know saw this coming.

We deal with Passport Services’ offices in eight cities and we know that the employees of those agencies are overall doing an excellent job of dealing with a difficult situation. So we take our hats off to them.

You can read more about the cost overruns on this Fox News article.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order or renew your passport.