Should we lower the price of U.S. passports?

ki4jgt said:
In this day and age we are taught about freedoms left and right. We're no longer a colonial society who believe that the world is one big scary place where no one can be trusted (although that exactly what some people do still believe). In a world where the price of travel is lower than the price to have the right to travel, something is wrong.

I've created a white house petition to lower the price of U.S. passports to that of a driver's license.

http://wh.gov/Kmw
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/fb/petition/petition/lower-price-us-passports/5x6x3gw8

The reasons passports should be cheaper are innumerable. My main points and arguments though are what I'm about to tell you.

In America (and most of the civelized world) people are garunteed inalienable rights. That means we can't be seperated from them. I think another of these rights is the right to educate yourself about the world you live in and to be able to do it first hand. One should not have to pay for the right to leave his or her country and see the world for themselves. One DOES NOT directly pay for this right. Instead, one pays for diplomatic vouching. One's home country uses the diplomatic strings it has with another country and vouches that you would be a good citizen to enter into that country. This vouching is pricey and indirectly stiples many who wish to explore the world and educate themselves in other cultures.

This vouching impedes on the freedoms and rights of it's citizens. As mentioned earlier, it restricts freedom to educate one's self. It also restricts one's ability to diplomatically represent their home country. Making it only possible for those who can afford to travel gives only a percentage of the country the right to do so.

Next, the price of passports, this is one of my favorite arguable technicalities. The price of a U.S. passport is so, b/c of the expenses of the security features of the document. In recent years I would have accepted this as fact and forgotten about it. However, new technologies have allowed for virtually unforgable identification techniques which cost pennies on the dollar. We have biometric id cards now which are used to prevent cheating on college entry exams. They're supposed to be virtually unforgable. We've learned that RFID has vulnerabilities and can't be trusted.

We know all this information, yet we still haven't put together a travel document which allows a person to step out of one country and into another without requiring them to pay an arm and a leg for the entailed securities.

I can get on a cargo ship for about half the price of a passport (cheaper if I'm willing to work) and sail to almost any place in the world I want to go.

Last argument, in multiple membered families (say 5 people). The price of a passport would drastically cut into their transportation budget. $130 X 5 = $650. That's an extra $650 added onto the maybe $250 price of a cargo ship ride to the country of choice.

When the price to travel is lower than the right to travel, something is WRONG.

In closing, I know this post looks like crap LOL but I would like you to sign it anyways. Share it with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter and let's get 25,000 signatures for the white house. Everyone should have the right to travel.
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If people were just able to accept smart cards as passports, the cost would go down to close to zero. Suppose you had a new social security card with a smart chip that had everything in it. You don't have go to and actually have a paper passport done and stamped, they'd just need your thumb scan and that would be that.

But everyone is afraid of the "mark of the beast" thing, so it's kind of unpopular, so it's still expensive.
 
Oc318 said:
If people were just able to accept smart cards as passports, the cost would go down to close to zero. Suppose you had a new social security card with a smart chip that had everything in it. You don't have go to and actually have a paper passport done and stamped, they'd just need your thumb scan and that would be that.
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Sorry to be off topic but that reminded me of a question--suppose someone has no fingers for a scan?

Oc318 said:
But everyone is afraid of the "mark of the beast" thing, so it's kind of unpopular, so it's still expensive.
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No, not everyone is afraid of the "mark of the beast" thing. :)
 
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I would also like them to lower that cost but that will never happen. The government will never give another source of revenue so the reality is... that's included in the cost of travelling. It's like buying a car without gas (which BTW almost half the price is taxed). You gotta pay to fly. I will pay whatever it costs to go where I want to go. If I can't afford to go there, then I will go somewhere else. That being said... for those who say if you can afford to fly then you can afford to buy passport. That's simply not true.

It sucks but I'd suggest you save up. We did.
 
Reba said:
Sorry to be off topic but that reminded me of a question--suppose someone has no fingers for a scan?
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Center of your palm would work just as well :) side of the palm, inside of the elbow if it comes to that. If you're actually missing both arms, there would be something like "missing both arms" in the "distinguishing marks" part of the passport. That and the picture would be pretty good ID I guess :)

Reba said:
No, not everyone is afraid of the "mark of the beast" thing. :)
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Last I heard, there was significant opposition against smart cards because of the chip and the "mark of the beast" issue. When I was in school, they'd actually have evangelists talk about that, specifically about smart chips and how they will one day be embedded into everything and you won't be able to trade without one.

This is also probably why most of the world has chipped credit and debit cards, but chipped cards are rare in the US. Might be less opposition now though, the fundamentalists don't have as strong an influence as before in the pre-Internet days.
 
Oc318 said:
Center of your palm would work just as well :) side of the palm, inside of the elbow if it comes to that. If you're actually missing both arms, there would be something like "missing both arms" in the "distinguishing marks" part of the passport. That and the picture would be pretty good ID I guess :)
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I guess. :)

I know there are some automated access systems that require finger/handprints, so I was curious about that.

Last I heard, there was significant opposition against smart cards because of the chip and the "mark of the beast" issue. When I was in school, they'd actually have evangelists talk about that, specifically about smart chips and how they will one day be embedded into everything and you won't be able to trade without one.

This is also probably why most of the world has chipped credit and debit cards, but chipped cards are rare in the US. Might be less opposition now though, the fundamentalists don't have as strong an influence as before in the pre-Internet days.
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I am what you would call a fundamentalist (independent Baptist). I must say that our evangelists and preachers don't preach against digital technology. My pastor is a real technology supporter (Mac man).

A digitized card isn't the same as a chip imbedded into the flesh anyway.

We do believe that the mark of the beast (and all other prophecies of end times) will be real but I'm afraid there is confusion about the sequence and surety of future events.

Whether people get imbedded with digital technology or not, the events of the end times will happen on God's timeline. Getting a chip will neither hurry nor delay His plan. Getting the mark of the beast will not bring on end times; it will be a result of the end times occurring.
 
When I got my passport, I thought the cost was reasonable. If I remember, it was about $150.

The idea of booking passage on a cargo vessel for half that amount sounds interesting.
 
Passports are charged the fee that it costs for processing the application. The documents have to be verified for authenticity, and the tools that are used to do so cost money as well as time for the person responsible for the research. The parents of minors have to be able to prove relationship; minor children with children need to be processed through legal to verify where the law stands on giving passports to minor parents. Specialists are required to handle legal adoption cases and weed out the fradulent claims, possible child abduction, etc. Research alone is time consuming especially given the parents of illegal aliens requesting passports for their children born here, and naturalized citizens being used to give their children derivative citizenship. And there’s training involved for those that work in the field: who see everything and need to know where the law applies on all cases. It’s a small fee and those that complain about the cost frequently have no idea of the magnitude of the work involved.


Laura
 
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