Multiple passports?

[Bill Stewart]

When I saw the title of this thread,
I was assuming it would be about getting Mozambique
or Sealand or other passports of convenience or coolness-factor
like the Old-School Cypherpunks used to do :-)

>On 10/30/05, Gregory Hicks <ghicks at cadence.com> wrote:
> > The only people that I knew that had two passports were those with an
> > "Official" (red) passport or a "Diplomatic" (black) passport.  If they
> > wanted to go play tourist, they had to also have a "tourist" (Blue)
> > passport.

A few years ago, before heading on an overseas trip,
I was unable to locate my current passport.
After dealing with a voicemail system adapted from a Kafka novel,
and bringing myself, my previous expired passport and other id,
a couple official-sized photographs and cash through the
secret-handshake elevator into a big waiting room for a long morning,
they made me a new passport.   (If you need to replace a passport
more than a month before your planned travel,
you're supposed to use the regular process at the Post Office
and maybe pay extra for Express Mail if you're impatient.
If you need to replace a passport within 3 days of travel,
they've got expedited processes at major passport offices like San Francisco.
But if you need to replace your passport two weeks before the trip,
there's no way to talk to a human being, just Kafka's voicemailbot,
so you have to wait until 3 days before the trip
to get an appointment for the emergency expedited process
instead of going in when you and they aren't busy :-)

They informed me that the lost passport was now invalid
and I should turn it in if I find it, because if I were to use it
to get back into the country it would be rejected with extreme prejudice,
since its number is now on the "lost passports" list.
Of course the next day when I was packing,
the passport showed up on the closet floor under the suitcase,
and unlike the previous passport which I took in to replace
when it was about to expire, it doesn't have holes
punched in it and Expired stamped on it.

For domestic air travel since the recent military coup,
I normally bring a passport as ID, since it's a request from the
former United States government asking foreign governments
like the current TSA White People to let me pass,
and I'd rather carry the technically-invalid one with me
instead of the valid one just in case I lose it.
I think I've also used it to travel from the EU back to the US,
but I'd expect that the La Migra thugs will
eventually improve their databases, possibly even before my old one expires,
especially because Homeland Security wants to RFIDize us.

I was considering "losing" my current passport before the
RFID things get started, but it doesn't look like there's time,
so I've got about 5 years to hope that the Republicans get
thrown out on their asses in the next election and the
Democrats decide that returning to the Constitution will sell better
than continuing the Permanent State of Yellowalertness.
Given the previous Clinton Administration's behavior,
I don't expect the Hillary Clinton Administration to do any better.

>At 09:27 PM 10/29/2005, Jay Goodman Tamboli wrote:
>I wasn't able to find a reference to support this on http://state.gov,
>but I know it's possible to get two passports if you plan to travel to
>both Israel and a country that refuses to admit people with Israeli
>stamps in their passports.

I don't think the US normally lets you have two passports,
or if they do they almost certainly have the same number.
But at least during the 1980s, Israel would be happy to give you
a separate piece of paper with to carry with your passport that
they'd stamp when you entered and left instead of stamping the
passport itself.  I don't remember if I did that or if I decided
not to worry about it because I'd visited the Arab countries
before going to Israel and didn't expect to get back any time soon.