Children's passports, new rules
 

I just read that when applying for a passport for a child under 14, the child must appear in person and the parent must produce info about their ability to travel with the kid (or some such info). Any experience with this? I don't know about your kids, but ours didn't come with "permission slips". Maybe the passport people are looking for court orders if parents are divorced, etc., but how would the passport person know all this? Also, I read this to apply only to new passports or renewals. If you have heard this applying to existing, good passports, let me know please. http://travel.state.gov/pam_notice.html

Hi bitter,

It's the fear mongers again.

Thisis to prevent parental abduction. The documentation they are after is probably a notarized letter from the other parent saying that it is OK to take the child out of the country.

Yes I read it in the paper..In order to prevent child abduction, the child must appear in person with a parent, when he apply for the passport.

Bitter:

Unfortunately child prostitution and child poronography is on an unheard of rise which some attribute to the internet not the deviants...

Parents must produce an original, bearing an imprinted seal, birth certificate and other legal documents.

This is a GOOD thing and has nothing to do with us good ole Fodor Travelers...

IRA: DO you mean child abduction?
My friends with teens would be interested in that parental abduction thing...just a little humor.

My Best,
Oaktown Traveler

My 9 year old daughter got her first passport last month. I took my daughter, the form (already filled out), my daughter's birth certificate and my passport as my ID. My husband didn't want to go with us so I printed the forms off of the internet for my husband to sign saying he authorized the passport being issued.

Our local post office is an agent so we waited in the long post office line but once it was our turn it was quick. The only problem was they were out of film and couldn't take the passport pictures. She sent us down the street to Kinko's and told us not to wait in line when we came back. Pretty painless. Passport arrived about 3 weeks later.