Bummer. My current one expires in May. Oh, well.

Any Current news
 

Any current news? My passport expires in September. And do want to wait for the new book.

State Department is currently sort of a like a chicken with its head cut off. I can't see this coming way sooner than March. Even 3-6 months later is far from guaranteed at this point.

You can ask State Department tomorrow on Twitter between 2-3PM Eastern.

Sorry I missed it! Anything transpired from this session?

if I get a new US passport now, will it be the new design?
 

if I get a new US passport now, will it be the new design?

I googled it and all I could find was that a new design was supposed to be coming in 2017. although all of those articles are 6 month old.

Refer to post# 253.

thanks! my US passport will expire in 2 months, I guess I'll just keep using my other passport as long as possible and wait until the new US passport comes out.

I got a new passport a month ago. All pages are numbered starting at page 3 (eagle, US flag and wheat with the Preamble to the Constitution and the signature line at the bottom) to page 52 (quote by Ellison Onizuka, riot act about sensative electronics in the passport and Customs/Agriculture/pay your income taxes regardless of where on the planet you live/Social Security). Looks about the same as my one from 10 years ago.

As long as you don't need to leave/re-enter the US, that is :cool:

That's true! When that happened to me while I was overseas a few years ago. I flew to Vancouver and took Amtrak back to LA. My passport card was still valid for another few years at that time and it worked perfectly for re-entering the US by train.

Earlier this week, I accompanied my grandmother-in-law to the local US Passport Agency because she needed a new passport at last minute. We showed up as soon as they opened. The security guys didn't care that she was almost 3 hours earlier than her scheduled appointment time.(nice to play the "young man, I'm old and I don't have a lot of time waiting around" card) The clerk processed her renewal and we came back at 2pm to pick up her new passport. Still the current design, obviously.

However, I did chat with the passport clerk about the "new" passport. She said "early 2018 at the earliest" was what they were told recently. :(

So, why would you wait for a new passport design? The one you get now will still be valid for 10 years, regardless of any redesign.

Some people buy new gadgets as soon as they are released even if their current ones work just fine ;) I guess it is in human nature to always want the latest and the greatest, and passport is no exception.

The older passports may be better than the newer ones. For example, one of my passports issued a handful of years ago is likely to last me longer than if I were to get a new primary one in say mid/late 2018. And if I get a new secondary one today, it wouldn't last me very long either, since even those no longer allow for supplemental visa pages to be put into them -- something that is an issue when it's possible for me to have multiple days in a week where I get 3 stamps per day.

Having the most recent passport can be a mixed blessing -- it can be perceived as more likely to be more valid than an older passport; or it can be perceived as less likely to be valid. It really depends on how suspicious the person examining the passport is.

I agree with you about visa pages, but besides this, I really don't see any advantages of the current passport. I do believe that the new passport will be more durable because of polycarbonate materials that thebio page will be made of. My other passport (from a country of birth) that I received in 2008 already featured a polycarbonate bio page with laser-engraved picture, raised text and my entire photo duplicated using micro-perforation technique. It was not biometric at that time and in terms of visa-free travel it was nowhere near the US passport, but it looked good. When I got my US passport in 2009, I was like "Really?" :)