Toby Everett

I tried scanning through the old posts, but had little luck sifting through them for
an answer, and so I throw myself upon the mercy of your collective wisdom.

My fiance and I are wondering whether she should apply for a new passport prior to
going to her K-1 visa interview. She currently has only three or four free pages in
her passport. She'll need one page for trips to Romania (two stamps each direction
for exit and entrance customs, that's four stamps per trip, and she'll need to make
two trips - one to get her police report for the time she spent at university and
one to do the K-1 visa interview). I presume she'll need one page for the K-1 visa
(they fill a whole page, right?). That leaves one or two pages for odds and ends,
and the passport is going to have to last her until she's back in Moldova and can
apply for a new one.

The obvious answer is for her to simply apply for a new passport now. That said,
we're wondering if there are advantages to using her existing passport. It currently
has three separate US visas in it as well visas for Finland (she studied Finnish at
university), the UK (tourist visa), Germany (she spent a year as an au pair),
Switzerland (visting with her host family - Switzerland isn't covered by the Schengen
agreements), as well as entrances and exits from a number of Western European
countries during the year she was an au pair (all covered under the Schengen
agreements). Her passport has an impressive record of visiting the US and Western
Europe and returning to Moldova, which can make a huge difference when applying for a
tourist visa. Will it matter at all when she applies for the K-1 visa? Is it worth
her trying to hang onto her old passport (voided, of course) if she applies for a new
one? She will undoubtedly photocopy it several times before even considering applying
for a new one (if only for the memories, but would it make a difference to have the
original? Thoughts?

Speaking of stuffed passports, has anyone here seen "The Slow Business of Going"? See
http://www.filethirteen.com/reviews/...owbusiness.htm for a nice review.
There's this brilliant opening scene where she presents her passport and the guy
keeps asking where her residence is, and she says she has none, that she's a
professional nomad. Her passport has hundreds of pages stapled into it, and the
passport control officer can't help but keep remarkingabout it. I wish I could
remember the dialogue - it was hilarious. I saw it at a film festival here in
Anchorage and I really wish I could watch it again. Here's a decent synopsis from
http://www.shifter.net/off/events.php?type=all:

"Petra Going (whose named translates roughly as "Rolling Stone") is a young woman
without a country. Born on a plane from Greece to Mexico, she claims no nationality,
and her "slow business" is her compulsive traveling (with only a rocking chair
strapped to her back) to find some sort of identity for herself. In a succession of
encounters in interchangeable hotel rooms, airports and streets, she records moments
of the ineffable and the inexplicable. Filmed over five years in more than ten
countries, and developed in collaboration with its actors, this head-spinning
adventure spans both geography and genre: from slapstick to surrealism, from film
noir to science fiction, tragedy to travelogue, multimedia to melodrama."

So, what should we do about a passport approaching full? Can we really staple
in pages?

--Toby Everett

Andy Platt

She should probably get a new passport but ask them to return the old one. Then she
can carry the old one with the visas in it and use the new one for new stamps.

Andy.

--
I'm not really here - it's just your warped imagination. "Toby Everett"
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > I tried scanning through the old posts, but had little luck sifting through them
    > for an answer, and so I throw myself upon the mercy of your collective wisdom.
    >
    > My fiance and I are wondering whether she should apply for a new passport prior to
    > going to her K-1 visa interview. She currently has only three or four free pages in
    > her passport. She'll need one page for trips to Romania (two stamps each direction
    > for exit and entrance customs, that's four stamps per trip, and she'll need to make
    > two trips - one to get her police report for the time she spent at university and
    > one to do the K-1 visa interview). I presume she'll need one page for the K-1 visa
    > (they fill a whole page, right?). That leaves one or two pages for odds and ends,
    > and the passport is going to have to last her until she's back in Moldova and can
    > apply for a new one.
    >
    > The obvious answer is for her to simply apply for a new passport now. That said,
    > we're wondering if there are advantages to using her existing passport. It
    > currently has three separate US visas in it as well visas for Finland (she studied
    > Finnish at university), the UK (tourist visa), Germany (she spent a year as an au
    > pair), Switzerland (visting with her host family - Switzerland isn't covered by the
    > Schengen agreements), as well as entrances and exits from a number of Western
    > European countries during the year she was an au pair (all covered under the
    > Schengen agreements). Her passport has an impressive record of visiting the US and
    > Western Europe and returning to Moldova, which can make a huge difference when
    > applying for a tourist visa. Will it matter at all when she applies for the K-1
    > visa? Is it worth her trying to hang onto her old passport (voided, of course) if
    > she applies for a new one? She will undoubtedly photocopy it several times before
    > even considering applying for a new one (if only for the memories, but would it
    > make a difference to have the original? Thoughts?
    >
    > Speaking of stuffed passports, has anyone here seen "The Slow Business of
    > Going"? See
http://www.filethirteen.com/reviews/...owbusiness.htm
    > for a nice review. There's this brilliant opening scene where she presents her
    > passport and the guy keeps asking where her residence is, and she says she has
    > none, that she's a professional nomad. Her passport has hundreds of pages stapled
    > into it, and the passport control officer can't help but keep remarkingabout it. I
    > wish I could remember the dialogue - it was hilarious. I saw it at a film festival
    > here in Anchorage and I really wish I could watch it again. Here's a decent
    > synopsis from http://www.shifter.net/off/events.php?type=all:
    >
    > "Petra Going (whose named translates roughly as "Rolling Stone") is a young woman
    > without a country. Born on a plane from Greece to Mexico, she claims no
    > nationality, and her "slow business" is her compulsive traveling (with only a
    > rocking chair strapped to her back) to find some sort of identity for herself. In a
    > succession of encounters in interchangeable hotel rooms, airports and streets, she
    > records moments of the ineffable and the inexplicable. Filmed over five years in
    > more than ten countries, and developed in collaboration with its actors, this
    > head-spinning adventure spans both geography and genre: from slapstick to
    > surrealism, from film noir to science fiction, tragedy to travelogue, multimedia to
    > melodrama."
    >
    > So, what should we do about a passport approaching full? Can we really staple in
    > pages?
    >
    > --Toby Everett

Toby Everett

[email protected] (Toby Everett) wrote in message
news:<[email protected] om>...
    > My fiance and I are wondering whether she should apply for a new
I know, I know, I know. I meant fiancee!

--Toby Everett