mptfan wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:03 pm
AerialWombat wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:29 pmIt’s not commonly known, but Americans *can* have two US passports. One is a 10-year, the backup is a 2-year.
Wow, is this true? I've never heard of this before, do you have a cite?
Can confirm, it is true. You could ask for the 2 year passport (it's actually 4 years now changed sometime late 2018) because your 10 year is out for visa stamping frequently, you don't travel frequently but your 10 year is out for a visa and you also have urgent travel plans, and you go to two countries one of which won't let you in if you have a stamp from the other.
The usa considers them an exception, so you don't have an automatic right to one, you have to show need and they can deny you. When I did it, I had to use an expedited 2nd passport service because I was not visiting anywhere close to one of the passport centers. The state department wanted a letter from my company indicating the need (security reasons and passport is often with immigration for visas), a letter from myself documenting why I wanted it (passport out for stamping often and working in a dangerous country where the us embassy recommended all americans living in the country have a second passport), and proof of a flight in a couple days to the country where I worked for the company (I was applying on a same day basis).
Other countries also allow this for clear reasons. People using them often work in dangerous areas (and embassy doesn't want to get into the situation of sending a consular officer to a border hotspot to issue emergency passports so citizens can get out since the neighboring country won't allow them in without, the us has had to do this before), because they are journalists travelling frequently and needing journalist visas frequently, and business people with the same visa needs.
When they were 2 years (4 now apparently), they were a bit of a pain because they are really only valid for 18 months from date of issue, not 2 years, as many countries have a requirement that you can enter only if your passport has a validity of 6 months or greater. This meant that every 18 months I was on leave in the states I had to apply for a new one at one of the same day passport centers or pay a passport service a lot of money to do this for you. I suppose this is probably why they changed it to 4 year validity recently.
Here's some detail about them from the american embassy in malaysia, which is what popped up on google search:
https://my.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-se ... -passport/