| |
Previous Posts
Archives
|
Visa & Passport Services, Archived Knowledge Base
Saturday, June 28, 2008
With the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, you may have been thinking that travel at airports has become pretty much as inconvenient as possible, however, India is trying to balance both security as well as convenience for travelers and has issued a new e-passport program.
President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Vice President Ansari all being issued the first e-passports. The new e-passports are unusual because they are biometric. These initial e-passports are being issued for diplomats only - citizens will be given access to the e-passports beginning in September 2010. “Around 800,000 e-passports would be issued by 2010,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said after presenting the first e-passport to Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan. “It is compatible with international standards and identity cards. It will protect against fraud and security breaches. It is easy to verify the The biometric e-passports have an electronic chip that contains all relevant personal data and simplify procedures at immigration. The United States hasn't implemented anything like the e-passport but there are numerous technologies under consideration that would allow the passport process, especially passport renewals to be even quicker. Labels: passport, passport applications, passport renewal, passport services, passports, travel, visa @: TexasTower.net 0 Comments  
Saturday, June 21, 2008
All of the new laws, rules and regulations concerning travel, or more specifically travel requiring a passport, are being put in place to help keep our nation more safe and secure. Sure, it is a real hassle and very time consuming, but we do need to remember that in the long run it benefits us.
Back in 2005 the GAO (Government Accountability Office) concluded that the State Department had not been regularly checking passport applications against lists of known criminals and suspected terrorists. The director of International Affairs and Trade cited a number of challenges to the State Department's passport fraud detection effort, including information sharing deficiencies, insufficient training, staffing and investigative resources. The most specific reason listed was that the State Department did not receive information on citizens listed in the terrorist screening center database, which is the government's consolidated terrorist watch list. Nor did the state department routinely obtain information from the FBI on the names of wanted individuals. Meaning that many of those individuals were not listed on the State Departments consular lookout or on any other database so it was easier for them to obtain passports and travel internationally without the knowledge of the appropriate authorities. Naturally, many changes had to be made and stricter laws needed to be put in place. Along with this came many changes on many different levels and while it is taxing and time consuming it helps a little if you will remember that all of this is being done so that all of us, including our children, can live in a safer environment. Labels: birth certificate, birth certificate copy, passport, passport applications, passport renewal, passport services, passports, travel, visa @: TexasTower.net 0 Comments
Saturday, June 14, 2008
According to a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, passport reading machines can "sniff" out individuals that are carrying fake documents, yet another reason to make sure that the passport issuing company you use is legit.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has installed new technology that can detect illegal passports. This week the machine detected a batch of tampered passports last week which led to the arrest of a suspected illegal passport issuer. The agents of the National Bureau of Investigation nabbed Net Caampued, 37, of Barangay Care, Tarlac City, on Thursday after prospective overseas workers pointed to her as the one who issued them the fake passports. Caampued also had a number of aliases such as Linaliza Romero, Linaliza Manalo and Nanette Manalo. The investigation was spurred on by complaints from several overseas job applicants from Anao, Tarlac, regarding the falsification of their passports. Starting early this year, the DFA began issuing machine-readable passports which use biometrics or special electronic information chips imbedded with security images on the laminated data page. Because of the new safety features on passports, documents that have been illegally tampered with are easier to spot and when then human eye can't catch them - technology now can. “The suspect used an old method called baklas, which means the passports were originally issued to other people but the data pages were replaced to show information about the new passport holder. The modus operandi was discovered after the machines failed to read the passports.” According to an Agent. This is the first case of passports being detected but it won't be the last, make sure the passports that you get for you and your family are done by a reputable company. That's why people that use our services come back again and again! Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20080615-142790/Passport-reading-machine-uncovers-fake-documentsLabels: passport, passport applications, passport renewal, passport services, passports, travel, visa @: TexasTower.net 0 Comments
Saturday, June 7, 2008
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative has caused a lot of confusion among travelers because they aren't exactly sure where and what they need to meet the requirements to travel legally to and from the United States.
We get a lot of questions about that so we created a simple two page sheet that answers the most common questions we get about this Initiative. Many people don't know that it is actually a two-part program that will be enacted first on all air travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and 17 regions in the Caribbean. Most frustrating are couples that have booked their honeymoons to any of these destinations months and months in advance when they were originally planning their wedding and now they find they have the scramble at the last minute to meet the requirements. That's where we come in. If you are traveling to any of these regions and you aren't sure you have everything you need under the new WHTI regulations, please just contact us and we'll help you get together every piece of documentation you need and we can do it fast! Labels: canada, canadian travel, passport, passport applications, passport renewal, passport services, passports, travel @: TexasTower.net 0 Comments
|
