Any US passport expiring this year should be renewed immediately, for these 5 good reasons:
- There is a “surge in demand” for passport renewals according to the US State Department. If you’re planning any business trip or vacation you need to avoid the problem of not having a valid passport by getting it renewed immediately and by avoiding the rush.
- Other countries are increasingly enforcing a requirement for a minimum six months’ validity in a passport. The department increasingly received desperate calls from travellers who were denied entry at foreign airports and borders because their passports had less than six months to go.
- It takes up to six weeks to receive your passport renewal, which is about two weeks longer than it took last year. If you’re in a hurry or forget the renewal, or sit just within the six month renewal term, that two week delay could spell the difference between travelling or not.
- The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative went into effect in 2007, which required passports for the first time for those people returning from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda. As the deadline for renewal for the massive numbers who renewed at that time has developed, so too will be the current demand for renewals – another reason to get in now.
- The Department of Homeland Security recently indicated that January 22, 2018 was the deate when residents of states that still have not complied with Real ID will have to show an alternative, approved form of identification, such as a passport, and while there is no current pressure for those people to renew right now, many are doing so, thus adding to the “passport congestion.”
So don’t delay with the renewal. It’s cheap and easy – but the time-frame can lock you into a self-imposed ‘travel ban’ if you don’t get it sort.
