Going home for the Holidays? Renew your passport on time!

Ever happen to you? You have booked your ticket, packed your suitcase, are ready to leave for the States and have finally found that safely tucked away passport.  And what do you know?  It expired five months ago and you are traveling tomorrow! You call the Consulate and find out it takes two weeks to get a new passport.  And even if you hold another country's passport, as a U.S. citizen, by law you must travel to and from the U.S. on your U.S. passport.

The time when you could receive a new passport on the spot is long past.  Consulates and embassies no longer produce regular passports in house. New safety requirements have made it mandatory to centralize production of passports State-side.  And on top of this, you need an appointment to visit the Consulate for a passport service.

Of course, if you have a real emergency, say a death or accident in the family, the Consulate is authorized to assist with an emergency passport. But simply letting a passport expire is, in the view of the State Department, not an emergency, leaving the Consulate with no means to resolve your predicament. You will have to wait for the arrival of the regular passport.

So it is best to avoid all this unnecessary stress and aggravation. Mark those passport expiry dates on your wall calendar, in your agenda, notebook, i-pad, smart phone, or whatever means we have at our disposal these days. Book that online appointment for your children’s new passport, or apply for your new adult passport by mail, in a timely manner.

This website has all the ins and outs on how to do it.

http://amsterdam.usconsulate.gov/passport_svcs2.html
http://amsterdam.usconsulate.gov/ppts_persapp.html
http://amsterdam.usconsulate.gov/ppt_applybymail.html