For a new passport application I could understand. But the address has already been verified! You already have an Indian passport with that address. And presumably an Adhaar card, a driving license, PAN card, phone bill, etc. which also probably required some proof of address (and presumably they can cross-ref at least some of these databases). How much more proof do they want?!

Adhaar is relatively new. Before than people attempted things with Ration, PAN and election ID cards etc. India had no real registration/verification system, so the visit by police was required.

just because you have a particular address on your passport doesn't mean that you still live at that address....everytime you apply for anything new they need to verify whether you are still at the address you claim to be at....

the system is not perfect by any means but the police verification bit is a easy solution that seems to work well for the rpo....

Please note that there seems to be some movement on the whole Passport Seva issue.

A comment on this blog indicated that CBP didn't know that India would require verification first. The steps on the page for the first two days made no mention of Passport Seva, however that has now been updated. Seems They are offering refunds to anyone who purchased without knowing that they needed to go to India first. Very odd situation, that CBP didn't know that India wanted this!



"Thank you for contacting the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Information Center.

The Government of India (GOI) recently informed us of their new requirement to have Indian nationals applying to Global Entry go to India for an interview. As this was not previously disclosed to us or our applicants, we are offering full refunds for anyone that applied before July 6, 2017 who cannot fulfill the GOI terms. We apologize for this, but this is not a U.S. Government requirement but rather the GOI.

Please reply to this email with the PASSID/membership number and we will send the request to process the refund."



Also, the Indian ambassador to the US replied to a tweet saying that these procedures are all being looked into.

"There are still some procedural issues to be sorted out...these are being worked upon."

That's correct according to CBP.

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-t...ndian-citizens

good to know....they really needed to sort all this out before opening up registration....

i don't think india knew themselves what they required....:p

this was a great pr opportunity for the indian pm's first meeting with trump so they announced & started this in a hurry without realizing how they were going to implement it....

glad that they are offering refunds to people who are not living in india....

It must have been frustrating to waste so many hours. But from the description, it seems that several staff (while being ill-informed) were at least trying to help and were polite. So compared to my horrible experiences with babus, this seemed like a good-feel story!!

Even first users of iPhone had to deal with glitches. So when you are the first one to go through the process, so close to announcement, resulting difficulties are not surprising.
But glad it worked out so nicely.

Lets hope they address following:
a) re-issue of "lifelong" OCI card just one year after its issue just because you crossed age 50
b) 90 year invalid senior citizen will lose his airtel cell phone service in spite of providing aadhar card because he can not go to airtel service center and wait 2 hour in line to give his thumb impression (why?? only babus know)

Agree with everythintg but for someone not living in India to not able to figure out that this process can not be for them is being too much naive.

i'm sorry but your post makes no sense....how could an indian citizen living outside of india figure out that they would have to return to india to complete this process????now the process is explained on the website but for the first week it wasn't....how is this being naive????

You are right. No point in arguing with 20/20 hindsight.

I doubt process is expected to work that way. As far as security clearance from local law enforecemenrt is involved, the process is usually limited to local residents (not citizens living anywhere in the world). Doubt Indian citizen living in Iran for 40 years is expected to get US Global Entry based on certificate from Indian police (even if he manages to get one by bribing local police). So returning to India for this purpose does not make sense.

This is similar to police clearance for Green Card. You need police clearance from LE of your resident country, not your citizen country.

One bad thing about US openning up global country to so many other nationals is that its advantages are going to degenerate into what has happened with fasttrack.

i don't think any indian citizen will get global entry based on a report from the indian police....the police verification is just one of the initial steps in the process....the relevant authorities in the us will make a decision after they receive the report from the rpo....i'm sure if they have reason to doubt any of that info then the application will be rejected....

To be clear, based on one of the posts above, the CBP did not require this! Not sure why India is making people return for in person interviews...the CBP does one here anyway.

not sure why india has this requirement....the most likely explanation is that it was not thought through & implemented in a hurry....similar to many other decisions this current government has taken....

another reason could be additional revenue for giving clearance....swiss & uk citizens also have to pay their own government to get clearance before their global entry application is considered....even german & mexican citizens have to be cleared by their own police or government before their global entry eligibility is considered, but i don't think they have to pay for the clearance....the only difference between these other countries & india is that all others have a streamlined process that makes it easy for their citizens to go through this process....

india definitely did not think this through....but i'm glad they are looking into it....as time goes on i'm sure the process will become easier....indian citizens living outside the country should not be made to return for police verification....that simply makes no sense....

Thanks Keyser for sharing the information. I'm a resident in US and will be visiting next month. While I can complete the PSK formalities, I'm not sure how they will complete police verification as I'm there for 2 days only. Did they tell you how long it will take for them to inform CBP of the clearance?

which city will you be in????you can always request the head passport officer at the rpo to get the verification done quickly....i know they have the ability to expedite it since mine was done on the same day....

i was told the rpo would receive the police clearance with 3 days of the police verification & they would upload the information the same or very next day....