Passport requests on the rise

Deputy city clerk says new laws, extended hours contributed to increase in applications

Thanks to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, the city clerk's office experienced a 34 percent increase in the number of passport applications being processed this past fiscal year than in the previous year.

Deputy City Clerk Lorene Krumm, who's responsible for processing the applications as one of the nation's 9,000 passport acceptance agencies, recently said there were 134 applications processed for the year ending June 30, compared to 100 the year before.

"It's because of the new laws that took effect in December 2006 and will take effect this December," she said. "Another reason, too, is the post office sometimes sends people over here because our hours are extended. After 4 p.m., a lot of times they'll refer them over here because we stay open until 6 p.m. A lot of people have come in and expressed that they didn't know that we did this."

The new law that Krumm talked about for 2007 requires U.S. citizens traveling by air to have a valid passport to enter or re-enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean Region, which is made up of 17 nations, from Anguilla to Turks and Caicos.

And starting this coming Jan. 31, the Department of Homeland Security will no longer accept oral declarations of citizenship and instead will require a passport, plus proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a birth certificate, to enter or re-enter the United States by land or sea.

"What they're looking for is that you've established citizenship," Krumm said. "To come in under the new regulations, you'll have to prove citizenship, which is a certified birth certificate. That doesn't mean footprints you get from a hospital or abstracts from a county. An official birth certificate has a raised seal. There are other ways to prove citizenship, but those are the standard methods."

What this means is what once was considered a weekend trip to Canada or Mexico -- a drive from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, to see the Vancouver Maritime Museum or a walk across the border to shop in Tijuana, Mexico -- will require, as of January, a passport to get back into the country.

And the need for a passport doesn't stop there.

"People are being told by tour operators and cruise lines that if they're going to Hawaii, it's highly recommended they get a passport," Krumm said.

No requirement of that kind was found on the State Department's Web site, which went on to say "U.S. citizens traveling to and returning directly from a U.S. territory (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Swains Island and U.S. Virgin Islands) are not considered to have left the U.S. territory and do not need to present a passport."

The city clerk's office started issuing passports in 2002 and added photographic services in 2005. A 2-inch-by-2-inch photo is required for a passport.

A passport is good for 10 years for adults and five years for children under the age of 18.

Costs range from $107 for standard processing of a passport that can take up to eight weeks and $200 for expedited service that can have a finished document returned in less than three weeks.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 required the Departments of Homeland Security and State to develop and implement a plan to require all travelers to present a passport or other document, or a combination of documents, that prove identity and citizenship when entering the United States.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was the outcome of that mandate, which had its roots as a core recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission.

"Secure documents are a national imperative that will prevent dangerous people from entering our country using fraudulent identification," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a news release. "This initiative fixes a vulnerability first identified by the 9/11 Commission and later addressed by Congress. It will enhance our ability to assess threats and confirm identity at ports of entry while continuing to facilitate lawful travel and commerce."