United States

Your First Time U.S. Passport – Obtaining One Is Not As Hard As You’d Think

If it’s your first time to apply for a passport, you’ll likely be confused with all the things you need to deal with in such as short time. For one, there are all the forms and documents that you need to provide, and sometimes you will be required to do a little legwork. It’s not really that confusing, however, and it shouldn’t be complicated. Let’s make things a lot easier by showing you what you need to know about applying for a New Passport.

The first item you need to deal with is the different forms used when applying for passports. These different forms are used for different purposes, so you really need to know which one you’ll need. There’s a form for applying for a passport for the first time, then there’s another one that you’ll fill in if you lost your passport, and then a different one if you have to renew your passport.  Since you want to apply for a passport, let’s deal with the first type of form.

Since you’re a first time passport applicant, you’ll need to fill in the DS-11 form. This is the form used by people who never had passports before. The good thing is that you can already download this form at the US Department of State’s website. You have the choice of filling the form in on your computer then printing it out, or you could also print out the form first then fill it in later by hand. What’s important here is the convenience it gives you. You no longer need to go to the passport office to get this form.

Once you have submitted this form along with all the necessary requirements for your application, your passport will then be processed. There are two ways of processing this: routine passport processing, and expedited passport processing. The routine passport processing is what you can choose to use if you are not planning to use your passport for foreign travel in the next ten weeks. Routine processing typically takes four to six weeks to complete.

Meanwhile, if you need to have your passport processed in less than four weeks, then you need to have your application expedited. As the name suggests, an expedited passport takes a lot faster to process than those that go through routine processing. In other words, expedited passports are given priority over routine ones.

Expedited passports are typically processed within a two to three week timeframe. This is the processing option of those who already have tickets for travel in less than two weeks. Aside from that, people who need to apply for a foreign visa in four weeks also opt to get an expedited New pasPort.

Speeding up the process of your application takes more resources. That’s why expedited passports have a small additional fee on top of the regular passport processing fees. Don’t worry about this though, as the price you have to pay isn’t the hefty, and it pays for itself in the form of speed and convenience that you get.

To sum up, you have two options when it comes to applying for a New Passport. The first one is to take it through the routine processing. It’s best if you’re not in a hurry to get your passport. On the other hand, there’s the expedited passport. It’s quicker than the routine processing, and is the better option if you need to have a passport in less than four weeks.

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