Your Government at Work

I recently renewed my passport for future travel.

Pretty straightforward. The State Department's website is very clear and the process is pretty easy. Just:

1) Decide if you want a passport book, a passport card, or both
2) Fill out the form
3) Get a couple of passport photos taken
4) Cut a check
5) Attach one of your passport photos to the form
6) Stick everything in an envelope with your old passport and mail it to an address listed on the form

Good times. Took about a month for them to process mine. And this is where things got interesting.

See, I decided to renew my passport book but for the novelty of it, I opted to get a passport card as well.

So about a month after I've submitted my application and tracked it, I get a big envelope in the mail. It's my new passport book. Accompanying it is another envelope. Within is my passport card (with paperwork explaining how this thing isn't really super-useful) and a little foil-lined envelope to block the RFID chip in it. Interestingly-enough, the passport book (which also has an RFID chip) doesn't come with any kind of blocking thingie, but those are easy enough to find.

My old passport? Nowhere to be seen. I'm a bit bummed. I did a fair amount of traveling on the old passport and I wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons.

The next day, it came in the mail.

So instead of mailing everything to me in one lump sum, thus saving postage, they mailed me my new passport, my new passport card, and my old passport in three separate envelopes.

I'm sure there's some kind of security reason for that. I doubt that's the actual reason. I'm chalking this up to just plain bureaucratic nonsense. All the same, I'm really happy at how smoothly the renewal went.

And it's nice to have a passport for travel. I've got to say, the new ones are really attractive.