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I thought it be a good idea to start a thread about Visas & Passports, I used to work as a passport courier for a 3rd party visa/passport processing company and processed tons of US Passports and visas to China, Brazil, Thailand, Ethiopia, Saudi, Russia and many many more. Hopefully other folk can chime in and we can help people figure out stuff because most situations are unique and can get very confusing. US Passport stuff $140 if you go thru the post office or $170 if you use a 3rd party company who will get it done faster. As of 2016 you can't add pages to your passport anymore you just have to renew it, so if you get a new passport get the 52 page book. Passport Cards ($30) are awesome if you go to Mexico, Canada by car/foot or go on a cruise. You can only get one when you renew or get a new passport you can't apply for just the card if you have a valid passport. I get harassed a lot by the police so I like using it as my ID cuz it doesn't have my address on it. If your Passport expires in 6 months or less it is basically useless for air travel and should be renewed ASAP. Visas Each Country is different in what they require to apply for a visa but here's the typical tourist requirements: Your valid Passport At least one passport photo(you should really have two) Their application A booked itinerary showing in & out of the country. Make sure traveler name, flight # and dates on there. Money Order/Visa fee If you going on business then you usually need some type of invite from the company in the foreign country and a letter from your employer here. Don't lie on your application but if you check the "have you committed a crime" box you will be denied entry 100%. Apparently Canada knows when you had a DUI 10+ years ago but China will never know. Always, always, always check your passports and visas to make sure they put the correct info on there. I've seen the stupidest poo poo at consulates. How to behave at a Consulate I've seen so many people freak out on Consulate staff, try to bribe them, lie to them etc. It never works, no means no. It doesn't hurt to press them a little bit but it ain't Burger King. Do your best to know what you need before you get there. Be aware of cultural stuff also, you are not getting into the Saudi Consulate with shorts and flip flops(learned that one the hard way) There is always a print/passport photo place in the same building or very close by so if you forget to print something you can usually pay them $1-2 and get what you need. Casual Yogurt fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 02:35
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Morbus posted:I got a multiple entry business visa for China back in October 2016. My passport expires in July 2017 and I want to renew it now. When you renew your passport, do your previous valid visas cross over somehow or do you need to get new ones? Great question! So every country is different but when you renew your passport they send you the new one and the old expired one with holes punched in it. China allows you to travel with both passports, a valid one and an expired one with a valid visa. So if you got the 10 year visa you can use it for 10 years as long as you have a separate valid passport. Some countries don't fly this way and some make you get new visas, or transfer to new passport.
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Mar 31, 2017 17:41
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Picnic Princess posted:I spent a few days over 2 months in Belize, which you're required to visit an immigration office to renew your visa every 30 days. So I had to do it twice. I went to the same office and had the same clerk help me both times. My first renewal had March 2 as the expiry date. So I went in on March 2 to renew for another 30 days, and he wrote March 3 as the expiry. When I went to leave the country on March 9, I was told I had overstayed my visa, but they saw I had two separate extension stickers in there with one day difference. They called the clerk in the immigration office and asked what was going on, and fortunately everything was okay and they let me leave without charging me a penalty. Exactly! Something as small as that can really gently caress poo poo up, so always check all the dates: Issue, expire, length, birthdate, ect... I've had the Brazilian Consulate give me a passport back with someone else's visa inside before, those are a little easier to catch.
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Apr 4, 2017 19:27
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ohgodwhat posted:If you have a multi entry Visa for China for work, can you use it for tourism as well? 2 choices: 1. Enter China with your valid visa 2. Apply for a Chinese Tourist Visa, pay the money and have the consulate cancel whatever valid visa you have currently. China has 10 year business and tourist visas, no one in there right mind would get a 10 year visa then a year later pay again and have them cancel a valid visa.
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Apr 5, 2017 19:25
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:So is there a better way to renew your (US) passport than "mail your current one with $100 and a form, and wait 4-8 weeks to get a new one (and your own one back)"? You can either do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. There is more money and slightly more paperwork involved with using a 3rd party company but it will get done much faster.
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Apr 7, 2017 01:48
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Original_Z posted:One thing to note is that for most visas you need at least one page left in your passport so they can slap the sticker on it. Sometimes border agents just seem to stamp wherever they feel like it and my passport had a lot of pages with like one or two stamps in it, unfortunately it got to a point where I had no space left, although when entering visa-waver countries they would just find space somewhere and stamp it. I tried to apply for a visa for China and they wouldn't let me do it, telling me that even if there's one stamp in the corner somewhere, they won't be able to use the page. At the time the price difference between adding new pages and just getting a new passport with double the standard pages was minuscule, so I just got a new one. When I was working as a courier people would send us their full passports all the time, or they would be like "but but but the last 3 pages are blank" The last 3 pages of the US passport are endorsement/amendment pages, they don't get that much use anymore now that you can't add pages but those last 3 pages are NOT VISA PAGES. Even though passport control will stamp them sometimes you are gonna be hard pressed to find a consulate that will put a full page Visa on one of those pages. So if your passport is full but you have the endorsement pages open, you could very well run into some problems crossing borders so beware.
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Apr 10, 2017 02:20
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Saladman posted:What about for countries that use terrible adhesive to put in full page visas, like Kenya that does it even for stupid transfer visas? I had two like that in my last passport and just pulled them out and I never had any trouble, but I wonder if thatd actually legal or not. Kind of seemed like it should be okay? Not any different from Israel or Cuba stamping sheets outside your passport really but I'm not a legal expert on this or anything. If your intentions are not nefarious then everything will be ok. If the adhesive is garbage and the visa falls out then just tape it back in or carry it loose. I had a client who had no available pages left to apply for a Chinese visa so he took out an old visa. There was glue residue and it was suspicious. The Consulate caught on and denied his visa application unless he showed up in person to explain, which wasn't gonna happen. Brazil glues and puts tape over their visas for this reason. Cuba is an outlier but the Israel situation is why the State Dept offers a 2nd passport so you can travel between Israel and Saudi for example. Vietnam has a loose leaf visa as well.
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Apr 12, 2017 01:13
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Brazil is going to start e-visas. http://www.brazilgovnews.gov.br/news/2017/09/brazil-to-begin-issuing-e-visas-for-australians-in-november
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Oct 31, 2017 06:02
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