mre5765

Tanja,

It seems me, SAS, Sweden's national carrier, is likely to let you board with a temporary Swedish passport to Sweden.

It also appears that Delta uses the same terminal in EWR as SAS.

So it seems you could could a flight from SFO on Delta to EWR using your green card as photo ID using a separate ticket, and then use your temporary passport to board your flight to Stockholm, without showing the TSA your temporary passport.

From the SF Consulate:
You are saying that the USA has instructed Sweden to allow its USA consulates to issue permanent passports just a few days per year?

Occam's Razor suggests that this is about cost cutting more than anything else. Yes the USA probably does pressure Sweden and other countries into producing machine readable passports with digital photos and digital signatures on harder to counterfeit paper, and yes this does cost more to do in each outpost instead of at a central location. But it is also the case that if the USA is willing to let a US postal clerk vet passport apps, surely the USA would have no problem letting a Swedish consular clerk vet passport apps.

If the USA ever "forces" Canada to not accept mail in passport applications, I expect rioting in the USA.

Passports are stupid anyway. Looking forward to the day when a passport is just an app on a smartphone.

GUWonder

Miixing apples with carrots needs to be avoided. Those mobile stations that come through periodically come around to facilitate application of regular passports -- regular passports which are not issued at Swedish consulates since the Swedish government caved in (rather willingly at that) to US-driven "standards". These consulates can facilitate procurement and delivery of the regular passports but they are not allowed to keep passport blanks and machines to make regular ones because of the push to centralize/lock-down the passport supply/logistics chains.

Current or former Danish consul-generals have even gone on public record somewhere about their doing much the same as the Swedes, when it comes to their role with passport issuance and why it has changed.

Money concerns didn't motivate the policy changes in this regard. Security concerns did drive DHS to require certain passport standards be delivered by, or on the way, from VWP countries for VWP participation to continue/take place. Here is a window into a part of the history of that:

http://www.dhs.gov/visa-waiver-progr...ments-timeline

That emergency passport replacement doc is not eligible for travel to the US, since the US requires either an ESTA (along with other conditions to be met if a person is wanting to use the VWP) or a visa when the ordinary foreign visitor from a VWP country seeks to enter or transit the US with a VWP country-issued international travel doc (be it a passport or not).

mre5765

Nothing, but money, prevents Sweden from having its consulates facilitating procurement 365 days a week.

The costs to the Swedish government would be comparable (if not cheaper) than the previous process of having each outpost manufacture passports. Doing the latter requires more skills and equipment at each outpost. Doing the former just requires training staff to procure (examine documents proving identity and citizenship; which is easy if the document is unexpired or recently expired Swedish passport) Moreover, the Canadian experience is that the USA is perfectly fine with a pure mail in process as long as all the passports are done in one central place in the Canada.

The practical effect here is that Sweden has opted to respond to the USA's visa waiver program by in effect making visa waivers moot for the group of Swedes that need passports the most.

Well digging in more, it looks like Terminal B separates domestic from international.

So another observation is that Sweden is part of the EU. So you could book a flight on LH: SFO/FRA/ARL. You could check in with your temporary passport, and to ensure you get through security, book a fully refundable domestic ticket on United. The LH flights leave out of the international terminal but it is connected airside to the United domestic gates, so you can get through TSA security with your green card. Once through, cancel your United ticket.

tanja

Thankyou for all your suggestions and so on. A little remark though. I am not going to Stockholm. I am going to south of Sweden. So Kastrup is the closest airport.

tanja

I thought first that it had to do with money. But no it is not. I have been told by an embassy that it is because USA "demands" more and more on passports. And that is very complicated and so on.
Swedish gov. is aware that swedes living abroad can get "stuck" and have problems a lot of times.
I am going for the 13 of april call in. I dont think it is worth my money and then stress of not getting on the plane.The trip is long enough.

GUWonder

Money wasn't the reason for the changes made by Sweden and all the VWP countries. US security demands were/are, with the US VWP participation being used as carrot-stick. The US conditioned/conditions VWP countries' participation in the VWP upon compliance with a variety of US-determined passport security measures, and money won't change those passport issuance requirements/restrictions.

Canada is not subject to US VWP participation, something that should have been obvious by now to anyone who has realized that in obvious practice EU VWP countries' visitors to the US get handled differently than Canadian visitors to the US.

cestmoi123

Sure it was. Sweden's clearly capable of issuing passports at their consulates in the US, hence the mobile photo station discussed below. I'm completely willing to believe that the costs of turning that one mobile photo station into a permanent station at each of their major consulates in the US exceeds the value, but it's clearly not something that's insurmountable, should the Swedish gov't be willing to spend the money.

Based on a very quick Google search, it looks like there are something like 100k Swedish citizens living in the US, so that would imply about 20k passport renewals per year. I'd think that would justify at least a couple locations processing passports. Worst case, the application material could just be sent back to Sweden, processed, and then returned.

GUWonder

It's insurmountable unless willing to be dropped out of the VWP.

Sweden and the other VWP countries aren't capable of doing what you think they can do if just blowing up budgets (spending money) to do so. The US has set foreign passport requirements in place -- and checks them -- for VWP countries like Sweden to remain as VWP eligible countries. Money won't waive those requirements. Don't believe me? Ask Carl Bildt.

cestmoi123

Huh? Clearly, Sweden has the ability to renew Swedish passports within the US. They do it at the Embassy in DC, and they do it through the Mobile Passport Station. Instead of having one Mobile Passport Station, there's nothing stopping them (other than money) from having one in every Swedish consulate, or at very least the eight or ten where the Mobile Passport Station stops. Again, it probably isn't worth the money, but it's not insurmountable.

GUWonder

The US negotiated in such a way as to disallow non-embassies of VWP countries in the US from retaining year-round 24/7 passport-making facilities at consulates across the US. It was a US security requirement for VWP participation that dictated the change, not a money requirement. Throwing money at the issue wouldn't work to get around the US VWP security requirements applicable to VWP countries' passports.

If Sweden tried to keep "Mobile Passport Stations" fixed at all its consulates year-round and issued passports at the consulates, our government would do what it did before: use the VWP as carrot-stick to try to get Sweden to change the conditions of Swedish passport issuance so as to limit the distribution of passport blanks and how the blanks may be completed. Do you even know whether or not the "Mobile Passport Stations" issue Swedish passports? That may be an easy one to answer (relative to getting Carl Bildt on the line on this issue, online as he often is too).

If you can't get Carl Bildt to go on record on this for you, you're welcome to try to FOIA with State and DHS to validate what has been shared here: the passport issuance restrictions for VWP countries' consulates are a product of VWP security requirements and not a product of a government budgetary issue.

It's been the richer VWP countries' governments that spent the money on MPS to capture biometric data; the relatively poorer VWP countries have not been as generous in offering MPS for biometric capture -- a VWP compliance requirement for participation in the VWP -- as the Swedish government.

Having facilities to take regular passport applications and processing such applications is not the same thing as issuing and delivering regular passports to the applicants entitled to a passport. Unless you're a VWP country's citizen and solely reliant upon a passport from such country for international travel, this kind of issue may never hit you directly; unfortunately, it hits others repeatedly. Some of those whom this had hit directly or indirectly have learned what prompted the changes in passport issuance policies: VWP compliance requirements directly related to the passport document security determinations set up by the US as sovereign operator of the VWP.

MPS captures biometrics from applicants; it doesn't issue regular Swedish passports eligible for VWP travel as that would genrally not meet the centralization requirements the US has set up.

tanja

Sweden does have mobile stations here for passports. You have to sign up on a list. Few times a year. When the list is full. You have to wait to next time.
Plus LAST YEAR they even shut this done for months cause of new rules.
So now they have a list again. People have to travel 2 times back and forth for hrs to apply and pick up passports. That is after being on a list. Getting an appoinment months away to even apply. If that is not sick/wrong and dont know what is.

GUWonder

And then after going in for the appointment and having biometrics captured for the regular Swedish passport, you still have to wait for the regular Swedish passport: (a) to be issued and delivered to the embassy/consulate if you are willing to return to pick it up days or weeks later; and/or (b) to be issued and then (if allowed) couriered/mailed from the consulate/embassy (if you don't want to go back to the embassy/consulate to pick it up after it is issued and sent to the embassy/consulate).

tanja

Correct. After the going there with proof. Person bevis ( birth certifiacate and old pass port plus valid ID.) it will take up to 3 weeks to pick it up in PERSON. Guess what I am now going for dual citizent ship. I dont ever want to do this again.
and YES you can only get it with pick up in person.

DanishFlyer

This - a mobile passport station does not MAKE passports, just collects the info and biometrics.

For Denmark, all the passports are made in one place, thus the wait time if you are overseas must included extra time for mailing to you consulate and then to you (or collect).

Last time I used a temporary passport was in the Summer of 2001, but it was only from the UK to DK and back. That passport had all the same info as a regular passport, except not machine readable and no chip. So would not have qualified for ESTA.

Later, while living in the USA, I needed to renew my passport, but was able to do that while home in DK for vacation - much easier and for me definitely worth renewing a little early to avoid travel to consulate abroad.

DanishFlyer

FlyingHoustonian

Money can't be the biggest problem for Sweden. Italy issues full passports at its US consulates and we are broke LOL