The new passport application form, numbered DS-11, is more intensive that past ones.
It requests more information.
It might even be requested for you to send a new biological questionnaire.
This form is almost impossible to fill out, requiring information from birth, and even before.
Many of the facts requested would not be available to the average person.
Age Requirements There are a number of reasons the new form must be used.
If you are getting your first one, if you are under sixteen, if yours was lost, stolen or issued over fifteen years ago or if you have changed your name and don't have legal documentation, you must use this new form.
Time It Takes The document needs to be filled out but not signed, then brought to an agent at a designated facility.
You will receive it within four to six weeks.
If it is needed sooner than, that two to four weeks, you need to present it to a facility and ask for expedited service.
If you must have it sooner than fourteen days, you should go to a regional agency or present it online at an express expedited agency.
It cannot be mailed in, however.
Questionnaire There is a new biographical questionnaire that a small part of the population may be required to submit.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to complete.
Examples of some information required include all your addresses since birth, total employment history from the very first job including the names of all employers and supervisors.
The addresses and phone numbers must also be included for these employers.
The address of your mother before you birth should also be included.
This and other information that is hard or impossible to find are required in ordered to obtain the passport.
It has been argued that this questionnaire is designed merely to make it harder for a person to get approval.
The argument continues that the questions have very little to do with the worthiness to qualify.
Some items required may not even be still available or applicable.
Having to name everyone who was at your birth, for example, is possibly no longer available, especially if the parents are deceased.
Passport History It has long been a practice to require something to allow one to travel.
In the Hebrew Bible, it was recorded that Nehemiah in 450 B.
C.
requested a letter from the king allowing him to travel in Judea.
In Europe during Medieval times, travelers had to show a receipt proving they had paid their taxes before entering another country.
Pictures were not required until the early 1900's, when they began to be attached.
Older documents only gave a verbal description of the holder.
The current requirements are greatly more detailed that those of old, especially so it the questionnaire is adopted.
In early one, they merely verified that the holder had permission to travel.
The newer ones seem to act more like endorsements of worthiness to travel to other countries.