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Saturday, August 26, 2006

Renewing My Philippine Passport

Current Mood:

My Philippine passport expires in a few weeks, so I went ahead and applied for a passport renewal. To my friends who've married and settled in the States, if you need to do the same, you'll need to go to the Philippine Embassy website to find out the process for your particular state (I had to mail my application to Washington D.C.).

The good news is that it only takes about 5 days to renew your passport. The bad news is that they ask for all sorts of documents. Thank goodness I only needed to renew my passport. If for some reason I *lost* my passport I would have to fly to Washington D.C. because a personal interview was going to be required.

Let me run through the list of things I had to mail to the Embassy:

my old passport
a photocopy of all the data pages of my old passport
a completed Passport Application form with 3 passport pictures attached. This has to be notarized if you're not applying in person at DC.
a cashier's check (they don't accept personal checks) for $50 for passport processing fees
a completed Report of Marriage application form (which had to be filled out in quadruplicate--yes, quadruplicate), with 4 picutres of me and 4 pictures of Steve. This form ALSO has to be notarized.
a cashier's check for $25 for Report of Marriage processing fees
an original or certified true copy of my marriage certificate (it's supposed to be returned)
4 photocopies of the original or certified true copy of the marriage certificate
a completed Information Sheet on Filipinos Marrying Foreign Nationals form (thank goodness it didn't ask for pictures)
2 stamped, self-addressed US Post Office Express Mail envelopes for them to be able to mail my new passport and Report of Marriage back to me

How much did the whole thing cost? Let's see...

4 passport pictures of Steve and 8 of me: $66.00 (and these were the instant passport pictures taken at Walmart)
Passport application fee: $50
Report of Marriage fee: $25
$12 to issue a cashier's check at the bank ($6 for each check)
the self-stamped, self-addressed Express Mail envelopes: $28.80 ($14.40 each)
postage to send the whole packet to Washington DC: $18.80

And the grand total comes to... $200.60. That's over P10,000.00.

...Hear that? That's the sound of my Filipino friends laughing their heads off at the sheer expense of it all :-).

Labels: Immigration

Posted by Unknown | 4:09 PM | 3 Comments |

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