State Dept. admits impossible passport form was illegal, but still wants it approved

The new U.S. passport application forms I warned you about last year are back, worse than ever.

Ignoring massive public opposition, and despite having recently admitted that it is already using the “proposed” forms illegally without approval, the State Department is trying again to get approval for a pair of impossible-to-complete new passport application forms that would, in effect, allow the State Department to deny you a passport simply by choosing to send you either or both of the new “long forms”.

Early last year, the State Department proposed a new “Biographical Questionnaire” for passport applicants, which would have required anyone selected to receive the new long-form DS-5513 to answer bizarre and intrusive personal trivia questions about everything from whether you were circumcised (and if so, with what accompanying religious rituals) to the dates of all of your mother”s pre- and post-natal medical appointments, your parents” addresses one year before you were born, every address at which you have ever resided, and your lifetime employment history including the names and phone numbers of each of your supervisors at every job you have ever held.

Most people would be unable to complete the proposed new form no matter how much time and money they invested in research. Requiring someone to complete Form DS-5513 would amount to de facto denial of their application for a passport — which, as I told the State Department in comments co-signed by organizations including the Identity Project and the Consumer Travel Alliance, appeared to be the point of the form.

The State Department”s notice of the proposal in the Federal Register didn”t include the form itself. After I obtained and published the proposed Form DS-5513, the story went viral (I was quoted on the same day by both Glenn Beck and the Daily Kos!) and more than 3,000 public comments objecting to the proposal were filed with the State Department in the final 24 hours of the comment period.

After that fiasco, the State Department went dark for several months, and claimed that they would “revise” the form. But they didn”t give up, and apparently they didn”t listen to (or didn”t care) what they had been told by members of the public in our comments.

The State Department is now seeking approval for a (slightly) revised Form DS-5513 as well as a new Form DS-5520, also for passport applicants, containing many of the same questions.

The State Department no longer wants you to tell the passport examiner about the circumstances of your circumcision, but does still want to know the dates and locations of all of your mother”s pre- and post-natal medical appointments, how long she was hospitalized for your birth, and a complete list of everyone who was in the room when you were born. The revised forms no longer ask for all the addresses at which you have lived, but only for those addresses you are least likely to know: all the places you lived from birth until age 18.

I’ve crossposted full details today at PapersPlease.org and ConsumerTraveler.com, including the versions of the forms that the State Department is now trying to get approved.