Temporarily American government relaxes rules for a passport for some destinations

June 8, 2007 - The Departments of State and Homeland Security announced on June 8, 2007, that effective today, American citizens travelling by air to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, which requested, but has not yet received his passport may temporarily enter and leave the United States by air until they have both a government-issued photo identification and the State Department official "show the application. " This concession is valid until September 30, 2007. American citizens travelling by land and sea are not yet required by the United States Government to present a passport and are not affected.

Please note: entry individual countries in the Caribbean, as well as certain policies by airlines and cruise lines, may still require obtaining a passport. You are invited to check these policies.

Candidates can obtain their Proof of the state of the application either online or by requesting proof of their request via e-mail.

However, the American State Department warned the candidates that you may need to wait up to a week to accelerate applications, and up to four weeks prior to a routine exercise application can be obtained and printed. In other words, if you have filed an application for non-accelerated recently and are traveling in less than four weeks, you can not benefit from this housing. Likewise, to accelerate applications where travel is expected in less than a week after the claim can not be helped.

The federal government has made this air travel due to wait longer than the time taken to process passport applications in the face of record demand. Currently, the United States Department of State of the unity of Passport Services has a large backlog in the processing of applications. Rather than taking the usual four to six weeks, requests for routine or renewals are taking 10 to 12 weeks, and in some cases even longer. Even the most expensive expedited service takes about three to four weeks.

If you need a passport to travel to other parts of the world in the next two weeks, please call or send an e-mail to the Information Centre of the national passport. Because the unity of the Passport Service uses a centralized system, you can not get your documents more quickly by submitting requests directly to a regional processing center. If you need to apply for or renew a passport in the very near future, you should submit your application as soon as possible!