Every Photographer should have a Current Passport
Even if your not going anywhere right now you may want to consider getting a current US passport. Why?
It's been in the news off and on the last couple of years (but only in passing for the most part) that Homeland Security wants everyone to have a passport for interstate travel, supposedly to protect us against terrorists somehow. The first part of that is the new passport card.
However, this week The US State Department has submitted new forms that will require everyone to provide every aspect of our personal history, and they mean everything; every job you've ever had, every address you ever lived at, even as a baby, every name and current phone and address of previous supervisors, where your mother lived one year before your birth, every school you've attended etc. Along with the new, nearly impossible to fill out forms and subsequent security checks they will drastically increase the price of a passport to cover all the new detailed background checks and processing, data collection and database maintenance making it even harder for some people to obtain one.
Some talking heads think this will make it hard for many people to travel, find work, move from one area to another while making it easier for the government to create new ways of social engineering; deciding where people move, work, and who gets permission. Reminds me of the old USSR where only party insiders could move up in the world or had choices. Some suggest that progressive thinking politicians have a long term plan of using this along with healthcare, the EPA, and other tools to further control and manage all aspects of everyday life.
The US State Department has come out endorsing the idea of requiring a passport for interstate travel and further suggested it should be required for employment as well because employers would know the background check had already been conducted by the government. In short if this goes through, not as a law but another presidential ruling so it can bypass Congress it would become very difficult to travel in the US or get work without an expensive and hard to get passport.
So, experts are advising people to get one now even if you are not planning over-seas travel. Apparently getting renewed will be easier for people who already have a passport, and you never know when you might want to take off to some other country for vacation or business travel.
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