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Renewing your passport is expensive, but now that there's a hefty new $82 fee for adding pages, it's almost a better deal to just go ahead and apply for a US passport renewal. Plus, there are limits to how many pages you can get added to your passport before you have to get a new one. If you'd prefer to put off the day of reckoning for as long as possible, here's a tip courtesy of Gadling's Grant Martin: "One…
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When you run out of pages in your passport, you have to get more pages added or you won't be allowed to travel. Usually, adding pages is no big deal-in fact, until just this summer, the government didn't even charge for it. However, tech entrepreneur Sanjeev Midha had a passport so large, he had to get an early US passport renewal instead. According to AOL.com, Midha's passport had enough pages that it could almost qualify as a small novel: a…
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For Dean Mancuso, an American traveling in Thailand, a lost passport was more than just a temporary inconvenience. It actually left him stranded in Thailand, begging from other Americans in order to support his Thai wife and his two daughters. How could this happen? Well, for some reason, after he lost his passport, Mancuso didn't go to the embassy to get a new one. Without any identification, it was impossible for him to go home, to get a job, or…
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It's hard to believe, but there was a time when you didn't have to fill out a passport application to travel internationally. In fact, passports weren't required for international travel until the first World War, though governments had been issuing passports or "documents of safe conduct" for centuries prior. After World War I, the League of Nations decided that passport requirements should be maintained for international travel in peacetime as well. Although today we think of passports as essential, when…
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*The passport fees have recently changed. As of April 2nd, 2018, the passport acceptance fee has gone up from $25 to $35. US citizens born to midwives near the US-Mexican border will get a chance to get new passports next month by applying at special mobile units set up by the Department of State. The mobile units are being set up as part of the settlement for a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of American citizens…
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At 5,525 miles long, the US/Canadian border is the longest border in the world. Not all of that border is paved-some is mountain wilderness, some of it empty prairie, and some of the border runs along the Great Lakes. If you are crossing from Canada into the United States at a border crossing in a populated area, you need a US passport, passport card or another document that's compliant with the World Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). For more details, see Do…
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The Mexican government just announced that they will hold off enforcing new regulations requiring US citizens to show their passports to get into the country, at least in some areas. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, the new rules will go into effect on March 1st for other parts of Mexico, but not for Baja California, because "Mexico lacks the infrastructure to enforce the regulations at busy ports such as San Ysidro and Otay Mesa." That means that US…
