A friend has lost his passport twice now and we started to debate how many times the United States would re-issue it? Someone mentioned that you only get a set number of chances to get a new one…to deter suspected counterfeiting. Do you have a right to a passport? Or is it a privilege granted by the state to travel?
Thanks
Getting a passport is not a right. Passport applications can be denied, however, it is my understanding that they are rarely denied, if you properly complete the application and your info checks out.
I am not aware of any limitations on replacement passports.
As long as you’re willing to keep paying for a replacement, I know of no restriction on the number of replacement U.S. passports you can get (see here: http://travel.state.gov/passport/lost/lost_848.html). However, after some particular number (three? five?), under some internal policy, a State Department investigator might want to speak to you about your curious habit of losing passports, just to make sure you’re not up to anything naughty.
Yes, they might suspect that you’re selling those passports to evildoers, then claiming they were lost so that you can get a replacement. You certainly don’t have a right to do that.
When you use the mandatory Form DS-64 to report a lost or stolen passport, you’ll be asked under penalty of perjury, “If you have had any other U.S. passport lost or stolen, give the approximate date of this loss or theft and any additional information you can provide.” If you answered “It’s happened seven times before. Oopsy!” they just might look at you all squinty like.
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Back in the 50s, the middle of the McCarthy scare, they certainly did refuse to issue passports. They just said something like, “It is not in best interests of the US that travel abroad” and that was unappealable. Linus Pauling had his passport confiscated. I think he got it back when he won a Nobel prize, (He won two of them, for peace and for chemistry. Perhaps it was confiscated when he won the peace prize (no red-blooded American can possibly favor peace) and restored when he won the chemistry prize, but I am too lazy to check that out.
Come on people. If you don’t know, don’t answer.
Yes, you have a constitutional right to a passport.
A passport wasn’t required for international travel until 1978 – before that, a passport was more convenience than requirement, and a lot of the crazy rules denying passports to communists, etc got overturned a few years after they were made.
However, since passports are now required, you have the right to get one. Your right stems from the privileges and immunities clause. The government cannot restrict your travel without due process.
The test is at least rational basis, but Saenz v Roe can be read to raise the standard to strict scrutiny. The big issue right now is denying passports to people with child support arrearages, a practice which hasn’t been tested by the supreme court.
Anyway, your right to a passport isn’t absolute, but neither are any of your other rights, but you do have a constitutional right to a passport.
Having lost (and replaced) my social security card recently, I know you supposedly get a limited number of replacements for that piece of government paper. Someone may be conflating the properties of the two of them regarding replacement.
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So, you don’t have the right to yell “fire” in a crowded theater, and you don’t have an unfettered right to a passport. The government can “fetter” you?
Explain the Paul Robeson case to me then.
I think there is also a distinct possibility of being denied a passport if you are in serious debt to a govt. agency—Things like tax issues or unpaid student loans…
Anyone know the Straight Dope on the details?
Specious logic. Felons can’t vote, does that mean that no one has a right to vote? You aren’t allowed to libel or slander people or incite riots, does that mean you have no right to free speech? (And no, you don’t have the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, although the analogy is a ways off base.)
In both cases, the answer is clearly no. Like I mentioned, you can’t be deprived of those rights without due process, just like you have the right not to be imprisoned by the government or the right not to have the government take your property without due process. The mere existence of a situation where the government can abrogate your rights through due process doesn’t mean that it’s not really a right.
If you had bothered to read my post, you might have gleaned a few significant details.
First off, that was before a passport was required to enter and exit the United States (Pre-1978). Secondly, a series of court decisions, partially spurred by similar cases, established that travel WAS a right, and that the government cannot abridge that right without due process. Furthermore, it’s frankly silly to say that you don’t, say, have a right to unionize because there were cases in 1870 where the government arrested people for trying to unionize.
The law today is quite clear, you have a right to a passport, and the right to interstate travel. It’s a quite highly protected right.
I don’t understand how you can say this with such certainty. Can you cite the statute/case law that establishes this? Is it like my right to a lawyer, do they have to give me one for free if I can’t afford it?
Well, the supreme court said so in Kent v Dulles:
In part, of course, the issuance of the passport carries some implication of intention to extend the bearer diplomatic protection, though it does no more than ‘request all whom it may concern to permit safely and freely to pass, and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection’ to this citizen of the United States. But that function of the passport is subordinate. Its crucial function today is control over exit. And, as we have seen, the right of exit is a personal right included within the word ‘liberty’ as used in the Fifth Amendment. If that ‘liberty’ is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the lawmaking functions of the Congress. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, supra. And if that power is delegated, the standards must be adequate to pass scrutiny by the accepted tests.
. . .
Where activities or enjoyment, natural and often necessary to the well-being of an American citizen, such as travel, are involved, we will construe narrowly all delegated powers that curtail or dilute them. We hesitate to find in this broad generalized power an authority to trench so heavily on the rights of the citizen.
. . .
To repeat, we deal here with a constitutional right of the citizen, a right which we must assume Congress will be faithful to respect. We would be faced with important constitutional questions were we to hold that Congress by s 1185 and s 211a had given the Secretary authority to withhold passports to citizens because of their beliefs or associations. Congress has made no such provision in explicit terms; and absent one, the Secretary may not employ that standard to restrict the citizens’ right of free movement.
Kent v Dulles, 367 US 117.
I don’t know if you can get a free passport for being poor. But a passport is part and parcel of your right to travel. Denying someone a passport is infringing upon their freedom of movement, thus requires due process. There is plenty more case law, including Roe v Saenz, which I mentioned above.
Dunno about the student loans, but AFAIK you can’t be denied a passport for tax reasons unless there’s a warrant for your arrest for tax evasion or something like that. That’s what happened to Bobby Fischer. IANAL, though, so don’t quote me on this, but it seems like plenty of people who have tax problems, owe money, or have similar issues with the IRS, but who do not have warrants or criminal preceedings against them, still get passports and travel abroad. That’s part of the due process thing mentioned above. Wesley Snipes was in Africa when his tax issues happened, wasn’t he?
ivn1188:
I’m not going to argue with your knowledge of case law, but if having a passport is a right, why is it not issued at birth? That certainly would cut down on a lot of hassle. This is a serious question.
A right is not a duty. You don’t have to have a passport. Why waste money issuing passports to people who neither need nor want them? Remember, the great majority of US citizens live and die without ever applying for a passport.
(Plus, baby photographs cease to be useful means of identification very, very quickly.)
A lot of people get “rights” and “priviliges” confused. I’ve known people who swore they had a “right” to a driver’s license.
I, too, have heard you can have your passport revoked for student-loan troubles. And I have also heard of people who sell their passports over here on the black market and then tell the embassy they lost it; yes, they are going to want to talk to you about that if you keep “losing” it.
Fortunately for some, certain establishments in Bangkok can whip up any old passport in a jiffy. 
I seem to recall that in addition to not being allowed to vote, convicted felons can’t have passports. Am I misremembering? I haven’t seen anything about this above.
I think that in some certain, limited cases this is true, especially if the felony conviction had to do with crimes commited while crossing an international border (“Midnight Express” situations) but for most garden variety felons, after serving their time and finishing probation, getting a passport should not be a problem…