Notes from a Former Passport Officer
A career Foreign Service Officer who has served in various posts around
the world contacted us with his tips on passport safety. Read and learn:
Let me add my two cents worth? I'm a former passport officer.
1) If you lost your driver's license on a Sunday, would you expect the
DMV to open up for you so your trip in a rented car would not be delayed?
Would you expect your bank to open up at midnight to replace a lost ATM
card? Please do NOT be surprised when replacing your lost passport
requires you to wait until the Embassy or Consulate-General opens for
normal business. Might this seriously inconvenience you? Yup. Sorry about
that. (American Embassies are in capital cities, Consulates-General in
other large cities.) The taxpayers can't afford 24/7 staffing of almost
300 consular posts around the world.
2) Whatever anyone tells you, you rarely NEED to carry your passport
with you "for identification". It may be safest left in the
hotel safe deposit box, and you walk around with a photocopy. The Athens
police will NOT shoot you if they "catch you" walking around
without ID.
3) Because passports are often accidentally stolen by thieves who
really just wanted your money, they are sometimes quickly discarded by the
thieves. Make sure you've taped your itinerary and home address/phone
number inside the back cover. Every Monday afternoon the local police used
to deliver us recovered passports, and we rarely had any way to reunite
them with their owners, most of whom were still in our city. (No, every US
consular mission is not wired to some great database that tells us all
about you....)
4) Please don't be insulted when we question you about your identity
and citizenship. People lie to us, and we don't know you. If you are a
naturalized American, you may need some proof of your citizenship.
5) Good advice is to leave copies with someone possessing a fax
machine. I issued many passports after receiving a faxed copy of someone's
birth or naturalization certificate.
6) Passports are expensive, and the guy who robbed yours may have taken
your money, too. The wisest tourists keep a $100 bill in their shoes. It
can come in handy for many reasons.
7) Don't let one person carry the whole family's passports and tickets.
And see #2 - why are you walking around with this stuff, anyway.
8) Take a deep breath. All your plans just went down the toilet. You
may need new tickets as well as passports, your planned itinerary may now
be history, and you may need to re-route yourself home. Take another deep
breath. See how HORRIBLE this is? Don't loose your passport.
9) See all those interesting native people all around you? They're
thieves. Be careful out there. I sometimes became absolutely convinced
that 3 quarters of the people sitting in sidewalk cafes were thieves
waiting for the other quarter to relax for just one second. Wanna rob a
tourist? Breakfast in a hotel - the dining room is full of backpacks and
purses bulging with money, cameras, passports, etc. And none of the owners
are paying much attention, because they're in their own hotel.
10) Ladies: do NOT set your purse on the floor next to your chair. Any
chair. Ever. Be careful out there.
01/05/2004
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