If you are traveling outside your home country, you must carry a valid passport with you at all times. This document allows you to cross international borders, and can leave a record of your travels at crossing stations. Without a passport, you can be apprehended, detained, and deported--so for a carefree vacation, make sure your passport is current and at hand.

When applying for a new passport or applying to get an old one renewed, standard service takes about six weeks to process your passport. Most passport acceptance facilities (located in courts, post offices, and libraries) do not actually produce the passport on site. Instead, they verify your identity and make sure everything is properly filled out and prepared. Then they send it to the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs, who in turn will send you your finished passport in the mail.

Getting An Express Passport

When applying for your passport at a passport acceptance facility, you can choose express service for your passport. For an additional $60, the State Department can shuffle your forms to the front of the list so that they are processed more quickly. This express service only takes about two weeks, plus mail time.

In emergency situations, though, two weeks may still be too much of a wait. In these instances, you can go to one of the 13 Passport Agencies in the US, where an emergency passport can be issued if you are leaving in 15 days or less. Alternately, you can hire a private passport expediter to get a full-validity passport on short notice for an additional fee.