Cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages remain plentiful for many overseas destinations, but if the State Department has its way, U.S. adults will soon be paying 35 percent more for passports. The new recommended charge for citizens applying for their first passport book is $135.
Further price increases include:
The price of the wallet size passport card, which Americans use visiting nearby countries, would increase to $55 from $45 for first time applicants.
Currently it is free to add more visa pages to a U.S. passport book. The State Department is proposing charging $82 for extra pages going forward.
People renewing their passports would pay $110 vs. the current $75, a 47% increase.
If the new fee structure is approved, citizens desiring to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship will be charged $450 vs. paying nothing now.
The State Departments justification for these increased fees is that the current fee structure is not covering the governments costs for the services being provided. The increased security and anti fraud measures added to passports are expensive. Fees raised by passport books are also supposed to pay for maintaining U.S. presence overseas to assist U.S. citizens.
Further expenses will be generated, according to the State Department, by applying new technologies to U.S. passport books and cards to ensure we stay ahead of resourceful and technologically savvy criminals and terrorists intent on harming the U.S.
Two New York Congressmen are fighting the new fees out of concern over the negative impact the higher fees will have on cross border tourism, commerce and economic opportunity. They believe that the regulations put in place last year requiring Americans to show passports when returning to the U.S. from Canada have already hurt trade and tourism at U.S. Canada border regions.
The new higher passport fees will likely go into effect in April.