Dealing with any government agency in any part of the world is crazy, so many rules, so many mistakes. Dealing with the US passport agency is definitely not delightful. Glenn and I have decided to go to Mexico this fall for a week. Under new laws if you leave the US for any foreign country, including Mexico or Canada you have to have a passport. Didn’t think of that. We looked and mine had expired, Nathan’s is good for 5 more months, Glenn’s is fine and Mandy doesn’t have one. As Nathan has started saying “great, just great!”. It annoys me when he says it but its very applicable in this instance.
So, since we have to get Mandy a new one we decided we would go ahead and renew Nathan’s since you have to have 6 months left on your passport after you come back. (Why 6 months?)
I pulled together all of the papers that you need for an adopted child and then asked a silly question. Since Nathan already has a passport can we just bring his current passport and the pictures, and the money and call it good. No good. You don’t renew a child’s passport. It has to be a new one each 5 years. Why??? Has anything changed since we filled out the last one, I ask you? No, nothing has changed, he is still the same boy and we are the same parents and we have the same documents. Ok, I give. So, we go to the Post office with all of our passport documents, birth certificate (Chinese), adoption certificate (Chinese), our wedding certificate (what is this suppose to prove?), 2 new photos, I threw in the S. S. card, Certificate of Citizenship and of course, money.
They did the same thing as last time – no, we want an American birth certificate (sorry, we don’t have one of those – they weren’t born in the US), a different adoption certificate (sorry again, it is the only one we have), and now we have to take all of the originals and send them to the government and in 6 weeks or so, you will get them back. I said “absolutely not!”. I will not part with originals, no way, no how. The Certificate of citizenship – OK, I can get another but the others huh-huh. Not happening. Blank stares from said Postal employees.
So, they gave us a telephone number and said we had to make an appt. downtown. I called the telephone number and after talking to a computer for quite a while I actually talked to a human. He asked when we were traveling and we said this fall. Sometime in September but wanted to get the passports out of the way before we booked travel. Bear in mind that it takes 6 weeks to get a passport by mail. 3 to 4 if you pay the expedited fee (which doubles the passport fee). I am talking to a government employee and he says basically I will have to leave the originals and they will be sent to me by the US Post office. This is the same Post Office that I mailed a check to my property manager on January 19, 2010. He finally received the check on June 30th, 2010. He lives in Houston, it should have taken one day. At least the months start with the same letter! I again said “no” a very resounding “no”. I also said I don’t trust the post office with something that is not replaceable.
He suggested that we make an appointment 14 days before we travel – get this we have to have travel tickets in hand – and then they will see us for an appointment to get a passport. I asked rather confused “14 days before we travel when it takes 6 weeks to get a passport?”. I was not exactly my nice self but a very confused and frustrated self but I didn’t yell.
What happens in this instance is that you either leave with a passport in hand or receive one the next day. Ok, we will see. More later on the continuing saga of the PASSPORTS.
