Why the Government Could Make it Nearly Impossible for You to Get a Passport

[Demeter]

http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/571284/why_the_government_could_make_it_nearly_impossible_for_you_to_get_a_passport?akid=6891.227380.tt4VUK&rd=1&t=18

Remember when Alaskan extremist candidate Joe Miller cited East Germany's border fence as a fine example and we all laughed and laughed because their fence was built to keep their own people in rather than keeping foreign people out?

Well, the laugh's on us. We may not be literally building such a fence, but we are creating a virtual one:

If you don’t want it to get even harder for a U.S. citizen to get a passport — now required for travel even to Canada or Mexico — you only have until Monday to let the State Department know.

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.

It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete.

It’s not clear from the supporting statement, statement of legal authorities, or regulatory assessment submitted by the State Department to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) why declining to discuss one’s siblings or to provide the phone number of your first supervisor when you were a teenager working at McDonalds would be a legitimate basis for denial of a passport to a U.S. citizen.

There’s more information in the Federal Register notice (also available AT THE LINK as a PDF) and from the Identity Project.

What in the hell is this about?

If the worry is that non-US citizens are getting passports then they need to change the verification process in a way that's possible to meet. If it's about something else, then they need to explain what it is..

This is Big Brother stuff --- they are setting up a series of roadblocks to use "just in case" they want to deny someone a passport. The question is, who and why? Basically, this will potentially deny US citizens the ability to travel outside the country. It may not be a wall, but it functions pretty effectively as one if they want it to.

[newfie11]

1. There is no way I can do that

My family moved every 3 months from the time I was 2 weeks old. 12 high schools (10-12 grade) and I have no idea how many grade schools. My dad was an electrician and we went where the union sent him.

This is absolute bullshit!!!!!!

I have a passport already and maybe I need to get the hell out NOW!!!!!

[alarimer]

27. Nobody can do that.

I can't remember my first boss's name. And the Taco Bell where I worked is no longer in existence. I can't remember all my addresses either; I have moved so much.

No, this is about keeping people from leaving the country. If this is the Obama administration's doing and not some Patriot Act bullshit, it is truly the death knell for this country.

[Citizen Worker]

29. "No, this is about keeping people from leaving the country." Exactly! While watching the coverage

of 911 with a friend I remember asking out loud, "how will they shut the borders down?" He replied, "it's real simple, just revoke everyone's passport and make them reapply and then reject applications."
In reading the proposed requirements there is some information I would be able to provide but there's no way I would know where my mother lived the year prior to my birth because both my parents are deceased. As to the names, addresses and phone numbers of employer supervisors that is impossible because I'm certain that many of them are deceased as well.
This is absurd and is nothing more than slamming the borders shut to prevent some people from leaving. You can bet this does not apply to the wealthy class.

[liberal N proud]

2. If you are going to enact a fascist totalitarian government you need to stop

people from leaving freely. Making it nearly impossible to get a passport keeps people trapped within its borders.

This is insane for a democratic republic which we claim to be.

[Scuba]

3. Foreign travel should be limited to the wealthy. If the rabble starts...

...seeing how good the citizens of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, etc. have it, they'll start rousing at home.

Can't have it.

[NICO9000]

23. Absolutely spot on

:yourock:

[barbtries]

4. do they offer a rationale for this?`

and is there a link where i can go to weigh in on this? i could not supply all of the information they want even if i was willing to do so. happily i just applied for my first passport 2 days ago and no reason to think it will be denied.

[fasttense]

5. It's to stop American citizen's mass exodus out of this country.

The rich need their captive slave class and serfs. About 3 million families/individuals leave the US permanently every year.

We have corruption at the highest level, kick backs and legal bribes to Supreme Court justices. We have the states taking out the Unions, and taking total control of towns and cities through corporate owned emergency financial managers. We have austerity measures cutting everything that helps the middle class and poor. We have public schools being turned into profit factories for the uber rich. We have a private prison justice system. We have a military made up of contracted out mercenaries that ignore the law. We have our government spying on us and corporations collecting private info and selling it for their profit. We have every corporation around dumping their pollution and destroying our environment. We have corporation that have been declared people. We have declining wages and poorly paid McJobs.

Who would want to stay in such a Banana Republic? Right now, even the middle class can scare up enough money to buy a passport and transportation out of the country (if only temporally). In about 10 years people will be fleeing the US. This is just another roadblock to prevent middle class flight from the US.

[leveymg]

6. It's justified in a number of ways. But, the data collection is added to the Total Information

profiles the federal government has created on virtually everyone of any potential interest. Since identities can be stolen, everyone has some sort of profile. They know more about you, and who you know, than you do about yourself.

Everyone profiled is assigned a Q, a Quotient, or a set of them, indicators of every activity, characteristic, belief or tendency any government agency finds to be potentially worth collecting data about, from Islamic Jihadist to Nazi sympathizer to Communist aggitator. All, just in case.

The East German Staasi would have envied us.

[jberryhill]

7. Some of that article is misleading

The part about mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth is on a section of the form to be filled in for persons who do not have other forms of proof of birth.

See the notations under "Section C: Information for Non-Institutional Births or Delayed Birth Filings".

http://papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ds5513-proposed.pdf

[leveymg]

9. yes, but look at the Privacy Act statement: "the info collected may be made available to DHS and

private employers for employment verification purposes." What private employers? Any private employer? What Privacy?

[jberryhill]

13. "for employment verification purposes"

That's seems pretty clear, no? If one identifies an employer, and the employer is called to verify that information, then the employer is perforce informed that the applicant had identified that employer on the form.

[leveymg]

17. That sentence could be read several ways:

1) As you read it, above.

2) The information is shared to verify employment for federal employment or federal contractor purposes.

3) The information is shared with private employers for their employment purposes.

I've learned that ambiguity in federal paperwork is rarely unintentional or unexploited by agencies and contractors.

[reggie the dog]

8. if the usa doesnt renew my passport

i will just have to use my french one

[leveymg]

10. Dept of State will simply share the info it gathered with the French Gov't, and vis-a-versa

under Memoranda of Understanding (MOU). If you are denied a US PP, chances are you won't be able to use your French one, either.

"Please go to Desk D at the TSA Office, sir. Right over there. Maybe they can help you. We can't let you board that aircraft until they say so. Next customer. . . "

[reggie the dog]

11. how would i get home?

i dont even live in the usa
why would they want to keep me?
at that point i would renounce my us citizenship and simply go home as a french person

[leveymg]

12. You could hold a Mars passport, and if TSA won't let you board, you're stuck here.

Don't count on driving across the border into Ol' Mexico or Canada, either, if you're on the No-fly list. We share that list with their border control agencies, as well. There have been cases like this, also of US Citizens stuck abroad - eventually, the diplomats and other gov't agencies work it out, if the person isn't in custody. Usually, they just want information about third parties.

You might have to be a very good swimmer to get back to Paris if you don't cooperate.

Of course, they could send a Mother Ship for you . . ."ak, ak".

[jberryhill]

14. Lol - Mexican border control

I'm guessing you never walked in at Tijuana.

I've never seen anyone checking anything on the Mexican side there.

[leveymg]

15. When was the last time you crossed?

[jberryhill]

19. About a year and a half ago

Just walked right in.

Driving in is a different story, but they've got the one-way rotating gate thingie next to the duty free shop, and you walk along a fenced area then, boom, you turn right to the plaza or catch a cab.

[reggie the dog]

21. i would walk across at niagra falls, they dont check everyone

and if i did get checked i would just show a french passport

i could always swim the rio grande

[LiberalFighter]

16. There would be no way I would be able to find all that information.

[dotymed]

18. It is already virtually impossible for impoverished

people to obtain a passport. "They" have increased the costs and created laws, ie...behind in child support, behind in debt to the government, etc.. that effectively exclude poor people from leaving America. Soo many poor people would love to be "ex-pats" and pursue a future in a more "fair" country but have already been consigned to a life(?) of serfdom right here in "the land of the free." We can't even go to Canada or Mexico legally....1984.

[jtuck004]

20. And yet I still laugh and laugh when Joe Miller speaks...

btw, Securitas asked me very much the same questions when I applied for a security job. Felt like a day labor place, for good reason.

That's not to say this policy is good or bad, but that the corps led the way...

Yours is a good question, however. Who benefits by demanding, knowing, and potentially using this information? Is it part of the never-ending expansion of police powers to combat perceived internal threats?

And why don't they just go online with the health insurance and credit rating companies if they are going to be this intrusive? For many, that could spit out a more accurate data sheet on most citizens over 50 faster than the person themselves can.

[Uncle Joe]

22. Some people may not realize it, but that wall they're building along the Mexican Border

works two ways.

Between the insanity of the draconian "War on Drugs," Big Brother paranoia of the "War on Terror," ongoing attacks against both unions and the social safety net, an immoral for profit prison system, ultimate regression of U.S. economic supremacy over a rebuilt post WWII industrial world along side a surging China topped off with escalating environmental crises, that it seems to me the PTB are leading the nation toward a 21st century version of prison slavery; gulags as a means to retain dirt cheap labor to support the plutocrats lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous, or in some cases not so famous but definitely rich.

Thanks for the thread, Demeter.

[Demeter]

24. You are welcome, Uncle Joe

I am very scared. I see no way out of the coming revolution.

[wackadoo wabbit]

25. It appears that the time for public comments has passed.

According to the Federal Register, there was a 60-day window for public comments that began on Feb. 24, which means that it ended a couple of days ago.

I wish I had known about this earlier.

http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/02/24/2011-4154/60-day-notice-of-proposed-information-collection-ds-5513-biographical-questionnaire-for-us-passport

[Fuddnik]

26. No way I could provide that information.

My mother lived up a holler in Bumfuck, West Virginia, that's not even there anymore. My parents moved more times than I can remember as a kid. I've pretty much worked since I was 14 years old, and had one steady job throughout adulthood, but several others when the economy was bad.

The phone number for the supervisor at McD's when I was 16? Just 43 years ago? I can't even remember his name, but I remember he was an asshole. Had another job in a warehouse before that. It's been closed for 40 years now.

[yurbud]

28. I ran into the same thing when I wanted to get my name off the airport watch list

I found the form I had to fill out to appeal it, and they wanted all that information and more--it was find of like ''make your own FBI file,'' which was creepier than being on the fucking list.