[quote=“jimipresley”]I don’t get it. I went down to the South African trade office to apply for a new passport and four weeks later they phoned me to tell me it was there.
Yes. The SOUTH AFRICAN trade office.
I can’t believe that Americans would be less efficient.
What’s the brouhaha about?[/quote]
The DoS propaganda reads:
[quote]
“The decision to discontinue this service was made to enhance the security of the passport and to abide by international passport standards,” according to a U.S. State Department statement.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday the move has been in the works for some time and is not related to the recent terror attacks in Paris, but reiterated that the change is related to security concerns and general vigilance."[/quote]
This is a matter of being willfully inconvenient, jimi. In the past, we could jet up to AIT and they would expedite your shit in a couple of heartbeats. OK, call it a week. The U.S. Embassy in Manila is a bitch to get in, but once you do, they take good care of you. They say it’s not about terror, but why the fuck had it “been in the works for some time”?
The “via mail” part of the policy will most likely be addressed by AIT in the coming weeks, I would reckon. I was under the impression that (in the past) they handled the “mail” end of the deal. I can’t imagine that we’d have to truck down to the local P.O. and drop our passports in the regular mail. That isn’t happening, at least for me. Anyway, for any other U.S. citizen who may cruise by, I highly recommend - if you already haven’t - sign up for the AIT email alert program.
In a nutshell, it seems clear that the DoS has no choice but to put the clamps on passports. The borders are porous and people are blowing shit up. It also appears to be part of the manufactured hysteria campaign in response to the last two or three years of planes falling out of the sky and whatnot. For me, and I’m sure many expat Muricans, the visa page policy is only one more speed bump on the road to expat life. Shrug. But get your ass down to AIT before the end of the year, right?
