I wish I could have a nice Bonita update post for you this morning, but I am managing a genuine crisis instead. I am so angry and so overwhelmed.
After I did all my immigration stuff last spring, I put my passport away carefully and have been using my residente temporal card as my ID. So I can say with assurance that my current situation is caused by an idiot who put a wet thumb over my passport when it was last handled:
That’s what I found my passport photo to look like when I pulled my passport out this morning to start working on my visa renewal paperwork.
I immediately contacted the embassy in Cancún and the person who called me back was genuinely helpful. She confirmed that my passport, which I renewed in 2016 so I’d have it for 10 years and really delay being in this situation of having to renew it from outside the country, is absolutely useless now.
I am exactly one month away from having to start the renewal process for my residente temporal visa, for which I need my passport as ID.
To get a new passport, I have to start from scratch, including getting guarantors. I thought I could use my hosts in Chelem, but I haven’t known them two years so I have to complete another form and pay an extra $50!
Once I have the paperwork in order, I could have printed everything and send it myself to CDMX. Average processing time, 20 business days.
But since I need my lack of guarantor form notarised, I have to print out everything and bring it in person to Cancún, which they do say does a better job of keeping the process at the within 20 business days. They close at 1PM, but I can leave Mérida at oh-dark 30 on a bus and get there mid-morning, then come home in the afternoon, so no worries about Bonita being left overnight (although her meal schedule will be interrupted).
In both cases, I have to send the original of my birth certificate, which I know for a fact I will never be able to replace if someone loses it, and the current passport.
Adding to the stress is that I need to provide them my credit card information, my card expired at the end of February, and despite the new card having been sent to me at the start of January, it’s not here yet.
The costs for this are unfathomable right now when I’m looking at over $500 for my visa renewal and over $500 for renewing my truck insurance — $280 for the new passport, a lost day to go to Cancún (which means losing $200 in income), the bus trip to Cancún, and the prepaid DHL.
Before I decide what I’m going to do, I’m going to see if can get some advice from Mexican immigration. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to renew in Progreso since I know the agents there. I have no idea who I’m going to deal with here in Mérida. I have a clean copy of the photo page so I’m hoping that if the immigration officers at least have that, they’ll turn a blind eye to the damaged photo and let me renew my visa, thereby eliminating the time constraint and the trip to Cancún.
So here’s my warning to Canadian passport holders: despite appearing laminated, your precious photo page is not not even water resistant. All the technology that goes into making the passports secure and they don’t have a lamination process to make at least that page waterproof? Ha. This is just another money grab. 🙁
OMG! A true disaster. So very sorry this is happening to you but most especially right at the very moment Bonita came into your life.
Appreciate the warning re the passports not being waterproof. It would be so very easy for someone to spill water or anything on it.
Obviously, the pages for stamps can’t be waterproof, but the ID page?! And to make me start from SCRATCH?! Getting my visa to move to another country was less work and hassle.
YOW. You sure wouldn’t figure on that happening.
I am just thinking out loud here. Is there a possibility that some careful shading with a thin colored marker or two would make the photo more realistic…and let you use it? You’ve got nothing to lose – the photo’s toast, anyways.
THEN laminate that sucker.
It’s beautiful here in the Rockies – dry down below, snowy up in the mountains. LOTS of wind.
I’m so sorry you’re having to go through this. What a pain in the butt.
You guys must have super lax rules in the US for your passports! There is zero way anything like that, including the lamination, would pass in Canada. And I would get in so much trouble if I had it replaced and it was obvious I’d tried to “fix” it.
Glad you’re having some nice weather!
OH trust me there is no way that we could get away with alering the photo on our passport here in the US either. I’d venture to guess you might even be charged a crime of some sort and possiable jail time. Or at least threatened with it.
I was shocked by how lackadaisical the photo requirements are in the US compared to Canada — you can go to a photo booth or print them at home! — so one had to wonder!
Cindy, please don’t even think about doing anything like you are suggesting here. You WOULD be charged or at least threatened with being charged with a crime. You do not alter anything on your passport without paying the price.
Gee, I did not realize I was getting into criminal territory here!
Sorry I suggested it in the first place… I really did mean well. And laminating’s a crime, too???
And yes, Rae, you CAN print off passport photos at home. Because our newest US passports used exactly photos like that. I’m not sure why that’s so awful to you, since they are definitely photos — and photos of us. The alternative is to go somewhere like Walgreen’s, where they set you up in front of a paper screen, and the photos you get aren’t any better. Why would that be such an improvement?
Rae, I was trying to think of some way you can get out of this mess — one you didn’t cause, since you did all the right things in the first place. Seems like the Powers That Be should recognize that and allow for it. But what am I saying — I’m assuming that bureaucracy is put in place for our good. (snort)
Cindy, I know you meant well.
The passport is the most important and most universally recognised form of ID. As such, in Canada you can’t print your own photos or go to a photo booth. Even if you go to our equivalent of Walgreen’s, the requirements are just as strict as to paper, lighting, pose, etc. You have to get a professional to do it right or your application will be rejected. So that’s why I was so shocked when I learned that Americans can print their own photos at home. From there, it’s not a stretch to think that you guys could get away with what you were suggesting.
Incorrect.
You can get you photos done however you wish!
…as long as they’re printed on photo paper, and the subject is properly lit, framed, in focus, zoomed, cropped, cut…
It’s honestly easier to go to Shopper’s, Walmart, AMA, Service Canada, or a registries office, and get it done there.
But nothing is stopping you from taking a selfie with your phone and printing at a kiosk, as long as you set up the photo correctly.
This is not accurate. Canadian passport photo rules are VERY strict and they must be taken by a professional photographer. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-passports/photos.html
Who knew? Amazing what we all take for granted. All the travelling you did through Europe, no problem. Really no one is in any position to say to a customs agent are your hands clean and dry! What a terrible way to find out something out the “hard” way. An individual in Vancouver was initially denied a passport renewal because this was a second request, they advised him it was a precious document that should be looked after. For the price we pay for a nine and a half year passport the government should insure that the photo page is better protected. There is really no way to protect your precious document!
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Can confirm from experience that Canadian passport standards are much more stringent than US. This applies not only to the photo but to the entire application process. I had my most recent Canadian passport photo taken at a Walgreens. It was much better than the photos I took of my kids for their US passports, but it was rejected by Passport Canada for being too blurry and having a slight glare. Walgreens refused to refund because the photo would have been sufficient for a US passport.