I don't know if it's true, but I observed that most common law countries (US, Australia, UK, Canada and New Zealand) are behind the curve in terms of passport technology. But hey, I'd still prefer to have a bad-quality passport that can get me to 184 countries visa-free than vice versa ;)

The US mandated the requirements, but doesn't seem to have to comply as the requirements were for foreigners traveling to the US. It was a matter of do as I say, not as I do. Same goes for fingerprints, which I think were required of other countries to be issued passports, while US citizens do not need to provide them to get a passport.

I was not aware that the US requires foreign passports to contain fingerprints in order to be accepted at POEs. They do take fingerprints from most foreign visitors, but as far as I know the only requirement for VWP passports is that they have to be biometric (i.e., the chip would need to contain a picture that could be used for face-recognition purposes)..

Yes, you're probably right. I was talking out of my backside. But, it seems a lot of countries are stuffing their chips with as much data as they can, without the US requiring them to do so, and while US passport security languishes. I should say that I do actually prefer less data collection so I'm not complaining.

I hope to God this happens because my passport expires in Sept 2021 and I really don't want to be stuck with the current design for another 10 years.

However with the way the government is going, the shutdown and cutbacks etc, I don't have any faith in anything.

(Would it kill them to hire someone with good graphic design experience? How do other countries seemingly have such cooler, minimalist yet still classy designs?)

Got my newborn's passport last month... it's the old one still. I knew it would be, but was slightly hoping the new one would show up in the post :) His EU passport is a newer version with a polycarbonate bio page, one like which I expect the US passport will 'soon' look, albeit in blue.

I totally forgot to ask the consular officer when they thought the new passport would go into circulation.

Mine expires in March 2021, and I too am getting nervous :)

Yep, it's still the old one. Probably, will be for another year and a half. Mine expired in June, so I finally had to renew it. I was hoping that at least the quality would get better compared to the one I got in 2009, but nope. The picture quality is still very bad -- it seems like they mess it up on purpose by increasing saturation to the point that it becomes barely recognizable. I am starting to think that maybe they do it as a security measure? :D

Well, even if you get the old one, it's not the end of the world.

Might be quicker to naturalize with another country offering polycarbonate passport than to wait for the US one. :p

Shocking how difficult this has become! Since 2009, there have been two major design overhauls for the British passport already, and likely a third when Brexit rolls around. No reason why the US can't do so.

I thought it might have been a security measure, but nobody else did it. It's quite a bad one, if I'm honest. But it is of course not the end of the world. I want it because my bio page is quite worn and might tear, so the more robust bio page is of interest. My other problem is that since I live abroad, they only issue the larger booklet as a matter of course, but I actually want the thinner one because it doesn't fill up, and because we have a lot of passports to carry so the thinner the better.

I'm trying, but not for the passport design :)

Does the US even care anymore? They're focusing resources on defending their ridiculous actions, so they probably just left the machines in the middle of being programmed due to damage control on the other fronts. <redacted>

So, CIS are going to start issuing newly designed travel documents for non-citizens (refugees, asylees, permanent residents): https://www.uscis.gov/news/alerts/us...avel-documents. I wonder if they will essentially follow the planned US passport design, and if this means the newly designed passports are also imminent? I remember they redesigned the travel documents around 2006 when the US passport was also last redesigned, so I expect the issuance of both is tied. Unless, of course, CIS have their act together a lot more than State?

It’s the weirdest thing. They have a contractor doing work on rolling this thing out and no news on when to expect it. I would expect some kind of announcement that they are doing diplomatic and official passports first. Tourist passports the following year. Earliest end of 2020- early 2021, if they announce soon. But just like when they updated the $100 bill, there were problems and delays and ultimately it was issued about 5 years behind schedule. This is Government. Will likely be issued at some point, but given overall apathy and incompetence it may be years still before they roll it out.

Without being overly dramatic, isn't this also a national security issue? Document designs are usually updated once every 10 years at least, because any longer and it will be easier to forge (given technologies become outdated, fraudsters have much more time to "learn and perfect" their forging of said document, etc).

The US has traditionally taken long to change passport designs. I think we could be up to another 3-4 years away. But who knows, really.

How long before US passports pose a security risk and see visa-free travel curtailed by countries? Or is the US too much of a cash cow for this to happen on a large scale?