The Concept: Passports
By Drina McDonald
With the internet and air-travel, every day transactions are done globally; the world has been tailored to specifically consider the individual. Places that once took weeks to get to are now merely hours away. As these technological advances persist, and everything has a app, we are finding quicker and easier ways to do just about anything. Including going on international adventures. With a passport, the world is at your finger tips… unless you’re having trouble getting one. Then that little blue book can feel worlds away.
Before passports became “passports”, they were simple formalities that proved the identity of the privileged, an entire family, or a whole ship. Not many people were traveling on their own in the late 19th century so there was no need to scrutinize a single persona, especially someone well known and/or wealthy. Instead, these documents were mainly used to gain access to more sophisticated events. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is what brought attention to the citizen in the United States, and as the First World War began, so did the need to identify independent motives.
Documents of particular importance such as marriage agreements, leases, bonds, and passports now needed to be more secure. Particular paper products are still used as a security measure, however, they started with animal skins and squiggly lines. Elspeth Healey, a Special Collections Librarian at the Spencer Research Library says that it was not uncommon for parties to produce two copies of an agreement that fit together much like a puzzle. They would literally indent the indenture.
“The documents would be printed head-to-head, meaning the document was almost mirrored at the top, and then they would take a special knife and cut a design to separate the documents in a way that kept them together,” says Healey. “This idea didn’t last too long…it wasn’t that difficult to recreate.”
The initial individual passports were large pieces of parchment that included a photograph and a list of physical attributes including age, height, complexion, forehead size, nose size, and chin structure. This was uncomfortable for the people in the early 20th century, and there was adequate media coverage of their disapproval.
“To suddenly be asked for not only the passport but also all the supporting documents – it suggests you can’t be trusted any more,” says Craig Robertson, author of The Passport in America: The History of a Document. Articles saying the new passport system was intrusive and dehumanizing were published. As more and more people came to and from America, the difficulty of identifying who was a citizen grew more important than identifying who was who. The passport quickly became something that identified more than your person, it identified your privilege.
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of people able to enter the States, and in 1926 the first American passports (as we know them today) came fresh off the press. The new issues included more safety features in the document itself, as well as the process it takes to get your passport. One would now need several official documents with identical spellings to obtain a passport, and the passport itself became the only form of national identification in the United States still to this day.
As society and technology has advanced, the current passports now include approximately 30 security features and several dozen materials, including special papers, plastics, and inks. These inks can be thermochromatic and change with temperature, or they can be invisible unless under a UV light. Some inks change colors with the angle, and other inks disappear if they are handled improperly. Holograms are also a major component of official government documents, such as the hundred dollar bill, and were added as a security feature in the 1980’s. The most recent addition to the security of your passport includes a microchip in the upper left-hand corner of the back page. The chip allows a duplicate, digital copy of your personal information to be recorded and housed in the Government Printing Office of Washington, D.C.
According to travel.state.gov over 21 million people obtained their U.S. passport in the year 2017. The United States Postal Service processes and accepts all passport applications, although it is the Department of State that issues the actual passport. The Post Master of the downtown Lawrence postal office referred me back to the USPS website. However, there are several regulations that are not spelled out for you, or even really mentioned, until you are at your appointment. Most people make several trips to the post office before having their application accepted. To avoid getting the run-around, here is a list of some fine-print technicalities:
- A state issued birth registration card is NO LONGER A VALID BIRTH CERTIFICATE. One MUST contact the state of their birth and either pick up an official copy of their birth certificate (with the state seal) or request one via mail.
- A passport CAN NOT BE RENEWED if it was issued before the holder was 16 years of age, or the passport was issued more than 15 years prior. One must go through the application process again if this is the case.
- Your passport WILL NOT BE FORWARDED to a new address if you happen to request a change of address while your passport is in the mail.
- You CAN NOT WEAR tank tops or white shirts in your passport photo. You will be asked to leave and come back dressed appropriately.
- Children under 16 years of age need BOTH PARENTS PRESENT to apply for a passport. If one parent or both parents is not available, valid documents are required (death certificates, parental guardian documents, etc…)
- If the mother and father of the child are no longer (or were never) together and the MOTHER HAS A DIFFERENT LAST NAME than the child, or has changed her name since the child’s birth, a marriage certificate and proof of name change is required.
The technological advancements that have been made over the last 100 years has turned many luxuries into a life source—the passport from a novelty to a necessity. Globally, there are over 10 million people who do not claim loyalty to any state. Like the car and smartphone, the passport has become a global convenience and safety assumption. However, getting a passport today may be more difficult than the traveling itself. A healthy dose of skepticism isn’t a bad thing, but it gets you wondering how identification will continue to change. Fingerprint and iris scanning technology has recently been passed to the layman, but new technologies from the militia has not been disclosed. As times change and the individual is globalized, we can see that the wars of our world have lasted much longer than the blood shed.
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[1] SOURCES:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/a-history-of-the-passport/
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/after/passport-statistics.html
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/nov/17/travelnews
https://gizmodo.com/your-passports-complex-security-tech-explained-by-forg-1683950188