Students: Get a New Passport and You Can Study Abroad in Norway - Expedited Passports

Studying abroad is often seen as a bit of a luxury. The cost varies depending on the program, but in many cases that’s a fair assessment. However, if you’re interested in living in the land of the midnight sun, you should know that Norway lets all students study at its public universities tuition-free- in most cases, even students from other countries. Huge hat tip to Matador Travel for publicizing this little-known but incredibly useful fact!

Of course, you’ll still have to arrange for plane tickets, a student visa, books, lodging and food. There’s also a small fee per semester that is required to take your exams but entitles you to student benefits and discounts. The good news is that if the Norwegian university you decide to study at is accredited by the US Department of Education, you can apply for financial aid to cover those expenses.

Unless they are insured on their parents’ plan, health insurance is often a struggle for college students. However, if you plan to study in Norway for a year or longer, you’ll be automatically enrolled in their national health insurance plan for students. If you’ll be studying for more than three months but less than a year, you are not automatically enrolled but can choose to enroll voluntarily.

Of course, Norwegian is not one of the languages that American teenagers typically study in high school. So, unless you want to spend some serious time studying the language and building proficiency beforehand, you’ll want to select a program that’s taught in English. There are several Bachelor’s programs available in English and even more Masters’ programs, so there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find a course of study that fits.

To get started, look here to see what programs are available and what the admission requirements are, and read the Matador piece to get an idea of what life is like as a foreign student in Norway.

Once you’ve been accepted into the course of your choice, you’ll need to apply for a new passport as soon as possible if you don’t have a valid one. Don’t wait until the last minute: new passport applications can take up to six weeks to process. Expedited applications are available, but still take up to three weeks. For faster service, the most convenient option is to use a private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport, though you also have the option to make an appointment at a regional passport agency office, assuming that there is one nearby and you can take the time off work.

We hand-deliver your paperwork to the Department of State, which allows us to get your application processed in as little as 24 hours, with no need to make an appointment, travel to a passport agency or wait in line.

Need a new passport in a hurry? Let us help!

This summer, several airlines have announced exciting new international routes that bring the world just a little bit closer to your doorstep. Here’s a rundown of the some of the most interesting new options for departing the United States (via Jaunted, unless otherwise noted):

Europe

If you’re on the West Coast and need a cheap flight to Europe, Condor Airlines now offers low-cost flights from Seattle, Washington to Frankfurt, Germany.  If you live in the Southeast, Dutch Airline ArkeFly has a surprise for you, too: nonstop flights from Orlando to Amsterdam. Meanwhile, a small public charter airline called Air Plus is now offering direct flights from Chicago to Croatia- not an intuitive destination, but one that’s becoming increasing popular with budget-conscious travelers. Finally, West Coast residents craving tea and scones will no doubt appreciate British Airway’s new route from San Diego to London.

Asia

How much of your childhood did you spend trying to dig a hole to China? Live your childhood dream with Delta’s new flights from Detroit to Beijing and Atlanta to Shanghai. Or, catch a Delta plane from Salt Lake City to Tokyo. (Via Delta)

Caribbean

Want to volunteer in Haiti this summer? Continental now has flights that go directly from Newark, New Jersey to Port-au-Prince.  If you’d rather just soak in the sun, Delta is now offering flights from New York to Antigua and from Minneapolis to Montego Bay, Jamaica. (via Delta).

Mexico

American Airlines is making it easier for travelers to get to Mexico with two new daily flights from Dallas/Fort Worth to Mazatlan International Airport and Morelia International Airport.  Border violence remains a concern, so carefully research the areas you’ll be traveling in to ensure you’re well away from the hot spots.

If you feel like taking off and leaving the country for the summer, you’ll need to get a passport quick if you don’t already have one.  Regular passport processing takes about six weeks, while expedited processing via the Department of State takes about three weeks. For faster service, you’ll need to have proof of travel and either make an appointment at one of the 24 passport agency offices in the country or use a private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport. We personally take your application to the Department of State, for processing in as little as 24 hours.

Need a passport, quick? Let us help!

If you’ve always wanted to visit Cuba without breaking the law, you’d better get your passport application in now. Under President Obama, the US Treasury Department has begun to issue “people-to-people” licenses to travel companies, allowing them to take ordinary Americans on guided tours of the island.

According to the New York Times, the government has been taking its sweet time when it comes to issuing the licenses, but nevertheless, eight tour operators have already been given the go-ahead.

Tom Popper, the director of Insight Cuba, one of the travel companies to receive a coveted permit, explained to the New York Times how easy the new permits make it for Americans to visit Cuba: ““All a U.S. citizen has to do is sign up for an authorized program and they can go to Cuba. It’s as simple as that.”

Well, maybe not quite “as simple as that.” At the moment, demand for the tours are quickly outpacing the supply, especially considering how slowly the government is granting licenses to the operators who run them. As Mr. Popper explained to the Times, ““It’s the forbidden fruit. It’s 50 years of pent-up demand for a country that 75 percent of Americans really, really want to travel to.”

Plus, the availability of the people-to-people permits is subject to the prevailing political winds. Between 2000 and 2003, they were available under President Bill Clinton. However, after George W. Bush was elected, the government stopped issuing them completely. (more…)

It’s been over three months since Japan was wracked by devastating earthquakes and a massive tsunami. While the country’s troubles have mostly faded from the headlines, they are far from over. In fact, more than 11,000 people are still stranded, with no place to call home.

If you want to visit the country in person to help, Inside Japan has the tour for you (via Jaunted). The four-day package includes a trip to hard-hit Tohoku to work on disaster cleanup with RQ Citizens Disaster Relief Network Japan. You’ll be doing grunt work: stuff like clearing roads and cleaning up houses.

For £450, or about $730, you’ll get 3 nights accommodation in a shared room with 2 to 6 people, 3 square meals a day, an English-speaking guide, equipment and protective gear. You’ll need to pay for your own international flight and to get to the meeting place in Tokyo’s Shimbashi Station.

To take this tour, you’ll need a big heart, a strong back and a willingness to get dirty. You’ll also need a passport. Right now, it’s taking about six weeks to get a passport application processed if you use standard processing. If you don’t already have a passport and you’d like to go to Japan this summer, ordering express passport processing instead would be a prudent move on your part.

Express passport processing costs an additional $60 and cuts processing time down to about three weeks. That’s fine if you’re leaving in August, but if you book a trip in July you may need it even faster. In that case, you have two options: request an appointment at one of twenty-four regional passport offices, or use a private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport. We hand-deliver your passport application to the Department of State for processing in as little as 24 hours, with no need to make an appointment or wait in line at a passport agency office.

For easy express passport service, contact us today!

In the 1999 film Being John Malkovich, actor John Malkovich plays a fictional version of himself grappling with a surreal variety of identity theft: a “portal” that allowed other people to take control of his brain.

Now, he’s the victim of a much more prosaic type: a stolen passport.

According to Reuters, Malkovich’s passport was stolen from his Prague hotel room last Friday, along with two cell phones.

A spokeswoman for the Mandarin Oriental hotel told Reuters that “We can confirm than an investigation is under way in the case of the disappearance of Mr Malkovich’s personal belongings.”

Fortunately, according to TV Guide, the stolen passport only delayed his trip to Poland by a few hours.

Losing your passport overseas is even more frightening than losing it at home, but there are some steps you can take to protect yourself and to make it easier to replace a stolen passport if it does happen. When it comes to protecting your passport, the most important thing you can do is to keep it somewhere safe, like the lockbox in your hotel room. However, sometimes even these room safes get broken into, or you might lose your passport on the way to board a flight or after you’ve gotten off the plane.

If you do suffer from a stolen passport, you’ll need to get in touch with the nearest US Embassy as soon as possible. There, you can report your passport stolen and apply for a replacement. If possible, before you leave on the trip make a copy of the pages of your passport that contain your personal data. Keep these separate from your passport. While the copy will not be sufficient to travel with, it will make it easier to get your passport replaced.

When replacing a stolen passport in the United States, if you already have a trip planned your main concern is likely to be time. It takes an average of six weeks to replace a stolen passport in the US. For faster service, you can pay an additional $60 for expedited processing, but that still leaves you hanging for about 3 weeks.

If you need your passport in less time than that, you have two options: make an appointment at one of the 25 regional passport agency offices located throughout the country, or use a private expediting company like RushMyPassport. The latter option is generally the most convenient and may even be cheaper, when you factor in the cost of travel to a passport agency and lost wages from time off work.

Need your stolen passport replaced ASAP? Contact us today!

According to the Department of State, the new passport office that just opened in Atlanta, Georgia marks the end of the department’s US Passport Agency Expansion Project.

The project, paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, opened a total of 7 new passport facilities to assist US citizens facing passport emergencies. New offices were built in Atlanta, Georgia; Buffalo, New York; El Paso, Texas; San Diego, California; and St. Albans, Vermont, while public access was added to existing facilities in Arkansas and New Hampshire.

In a press release, the State Department said that “These ARRA-funded facilities are providing urgent passport services to millions of U.S. citizens in previously underserved areas. Each facility issues passport books on site to qualifying customers who have plans to travel within 14 days. Four of the facilities are located within several miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders and issue passport cards on site.”

The new passport offices are definitely an improvement, but if you need an expedited passport you’re still likely to find the service to be a hassle. For one thing, even with the new locations, many Americans still face a long car trip or even a plane ride to get to the nearest passport agency office. There are only 25 of them in the United States.

Secondly, passport agency offices tend to keep limited office hours. Not only are they closed on weekends and holidays as you might expect, they typically close earlier in the afternoon than other businesses, usually by 3:00 or 4:00 local time. Plus, they don’t accept walk-ins, so you’ll have to go through the trouble of making an appointment.

If you can’t fit all of that into your schedule, using an expediting company like RushMyPassport might be a better option for you. With an expediting company, if you need to apply for your passport in person you can simply go down to your local post office to have your documents “sealed” by the clerk. Once your paperwork is in order, send it to us and we’ll hand-deliver it to the Department of State. Depending on the option you select, we can have it processed in as little as 24 hours!

Need a new passport fast? We can help!

Aarrr, me hearties! If the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie has you craving a taste of the pirate’s life, you need to book tickets to the Dominican Republic this summer. A few years ago, divers exploring the reefs off Catalina island stumbled upon the skeletal remains of Quedagh Merchant, a ship last captained by a real pirate of the Caribbean, Captain Kidd.

The ship, laden with treasure, was captured by Kidd and his crew off the coast of India in 1698. It was one of Captain Kidd’s only successful plunders- he was technically a privateer, or a pirate employed by the British Navy to capture other pirates and prey on the ships of rival navies. So, he didn’t attack every ship he came across. This enraged his crew, which was far less concerned with staying on the good side of the Royal Navy.

Unfortunately, even the Quedagh Merchant was not technically legal prey – although it flew under a French flag, the captain was an Englishman. With a price on his head, Captain Kidd left the boat in the Caribbean with his “trusted” crew, and sailed to New York to try to clear his name.

Of course, as soon as his ship passed the horizon, his crew took the opportunity to sink the Quedagh Merchant and make off with the treasure. Pirates, right? What can you do?

In New York, Kidd was arrested and taken to England, where he was convicted of piracy and hung. His decaying body was placed in a gibbet over the Thames, where it remained for the next 20 years as a warning to others.

What of the Quedagh Merchant? Discovered in 2007, it was dedicated this month as an underwater museum and nature preserve. According to Science Daily, it is expected to become quite popular:

“As the interest in eco-tourism and unique vacation destinations continues to grow, this Living Museum of the Sea is predicted to be a sought-after destination for those seeking underwater adventures combined with significant 17th century maritime history representative of the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean.” (more…)

The Department of State is considering creating a new passport form, and the public comment period on the proposal ends Tuesday, April 26th.

According to San Antonio’s Ken5.com, the new form, which would be called DS-5513, is a biographical questionnaire that the Department of State would send out whenever a passport applicant “submits citizenship or identity evidence that is insufficient or of questionable authenticity.”

In other words, if you have a delayed birth certificate filed more than one year after you were born, or you were born at home with a midwife instead of in a hospital, you would probably need to fill out DS-5513. Take a look at a copy of the proposed form here (PDF). As you can see, it’s very detailed.

Sample questions for people born at home or with delayed birth certificates include:

• Whether there was a circumcision or other religious ceremony to mark your birth, and if so, who participated.
• Your mother’s addresses from year before through one year after you were born.
• When and where she received pre- or post-natal care.

Even if you were born in a hospital and your birth certificate was filed in a timely manner, the government may ask you to complete this form to provide biographical information for all the relatives in your immediate family, as well as the address of every single place you’ve ever lived and worked. The Department of State expects the new form to apply to about 74,000 applicants each year.

Of course, many people simply won’t have all of this information. I doubt my mother even remembers the dates of her prenatal appointments, and I surely don’t remember every single address I’ve ever lived at since birth. What’s not clear is whether or not all of this information will be required in order for the State Department to issue a passport to you if they have questions about your birth certificate, or whether they just want you to get as much information as you can and submit it along with the secondary evidence of US citizenship that they already ask for under those circumstances.

The public comment period on the new form ends Tuesday the 26th. If you’d like to submit a comment, go to the Federal Register website for instructions. After the 26th, the State Department will consider the comments it has received and make a decision. We’ll keep you informed as we learn more about this potential new procedure.

This questionnaire is a good example of the kinds of unexpected occurrences that can hold up an application for a new passport. At RushMyPassport, we can’t stop the Department of State from requesting additional information before they’ll give you a passport, but we can help walk you through the process so that any roadblocks get taken care of as soon as possible.

Need a new passport? Contact us today!

Lost amidst fears of a budget shutdown last week was a bit of welcome news for US citizens living in El Paso, Texas: A new emergency passport office is now open downtown.

The office is the 24th regional Passport Agency office to open in the United States. Unlike your local post office, these facilities only handle emergency applications, typically issuing passports within 24 hours.  Previously, before the office opened, El Paso residents who needed same day passport services had a long trip ahead of them; the two closest agencies were in Houston or Tucson.  Tucson is about 300 miles away, and Houston is 750. Neither office is particularly convenient.

The big question is: What took so long? Located right along the border, El Paso seems like a natural spot for a passport agency office. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services Brenda Sprague  agreed, telling El Paso Inc that “El Paso was very high on our list because we felt we were not properly supporting the borderland. You get these very complicated issues because it’s very common for people here to have business, family, residences on both sides of the border.”

Speaking to El Paso’s KFox14, Sprague said ”This is particularly significant for people who have an emergency outside the border. And for people at Fort Bliss who may have an emergency overseas.”

The passport office is open to citizens who need a passport for travel within the next 14 days, or for travel within the next 3 weeks where a foreign visa is required. The Department of State expects the passport office to issue between 46,000 to 47,000 passports each year.

To make an appointment, simply call 1-877-487-2778. You’ll need to bring a copy of your itinerary with you to the office, along with the other required documents. Keep in mind that the passport agency office is only open from 7:30 in the morning to 3:30 in afternoon, and only on weekdays. You may need to set aside some time off work to head down to the office.

If making an appointment, taking time off work and waiting in line sounds like too much of a hassle, you do have the option of using a private expediting company like RushMyPassport as well. When you use an expediting service, you get the convenience of being able to apply for your passport at the local post office, assuming they accept passport applications, plus having your passport hand-delivered to the Department of State for processing in as little as 24 hours.

Need same day passport processing? Contact us today!

At least, not this Saturday: If you were planning to submit your passport application this weekend during the Department of State’s “Passport Day in the USA” event,   there’s some bad news: Passport Day has been postponed indefinitely due to the impending government shut down.

This Saturday was supposed to be the third year for the annual event, in which passport offices, which normally keep banker’s hours, open their doors on a Saturday to accept passport applications. That’s  a big deal for a lot of people! In fact, in 2009, the first year the Department of State held Passport Day, over 57,000 people showed up to submit their passport applications.

The bottom line: If you work a lot during the week, Passport Day is a godsend. If you have a child (and therefore need to round up both the kid and the other parent and get them into the passport office at the same time), Passport Day is a godsend.

However, since there’s no way to know whether or not the government will still be fully functional come 12:01 am, the State Department decided that the prudent thing to do would be to cancel the event.  Their website now features a pretty banner promoting Passport Day with this statement underneath:

“Because of a possible government shutdown, the Department of State must cancel “Passport Day in the USA,” which had been scheduled for Saturday, April 9, 2011. We regret that this event cannot take place as planned.” (more…)