Britain’s King Charles doesn’t need a passport. After all, inscribed inside is a statement from the Secretary of State, acting “in the name of His Majesty” to allow the bearer free passage in a foreign country. Although the Vatican doesn’t have immigration controls, citizens there have passports, including the Pope who holds #1. Even the President of the United States isn’t above the law, either in office or afterwards, as far as the State Department is concerned. To travel outside of the country, all Americans need a passport and except for some emergency circumstances they all expire every 10 years. That was the case for me so we had to find out how to renew your US passport while living in France.

We haven’t had much contact with the US Embassy in Paris but when we did need their assistance in setting up our Social Security pension direct deposits, it worked well. Checking their website we saw that renewals could only be done through the postal mail; not in person and not online, although the application form can be filled out online and then printed to mail in. Briefly, the required documents were:

• Passport Renewal Form DS-82
• One color passport size photo (Bill took this for me)
• A photocopy of the data page of your current passport
• The passport that you are renewing
• Proof of paying the $130 renewal fee on the US government’s payment site
• A self-addressed prepaid envelope for passport return

Here’s the link to the official Passport Instructions page for full details: https://fr.usembassy.gov/passports/passport-instructions/

Filling out the renewal form online was easy enough but they emphasize that because a barcode is created, based on the information that you have input, you must start a new form if you make any errors. We found out that you should mail your printed application no later than 30 days after you print it. Paying the renewal fee was simple as well; however as backup, I should have printed the confirmation page as soon as it appeared on my screen. While I was checking my inbox to ensure that they had indeed sent me an email confirmation to print out, that original confirmation page timed out and disappeared.

At the post office we bought a prepaid envelope, officially called Colissimo Prêt-à-Envoyer France – Pochette souple double usage 1 kg for 10.00€ that the postal employee scanned to register it in their system without the need to attach postage. Folding that we put it in the US Embassy addressed envelope we had brought from home along with the other documents from the list above, filled out the registered letter with signature form (Lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) and gave the employee an additional 8.27€ for the postage to Paris, total 18.27€.

It appears that the US embassy in Paris sends your passport to Washington where it is renewed and then sent back to Paris. Given that the entire door-to-door process from our house and back took only 4 weeks, including the Christmas/New Year’s holidays, we’d say that the embassy and the State Department were very efficient. Here’s a chart with specific dates and details:

Date	Action
December 11, 2023	Mailed passport from Carcassonne post office
December 21, 2023	Delivered to US embassy in Paris
December 23, 2023	Confirmed by embassy to La Poste website that passport was delivered
January 1, 2024	Status shows “in process” on Travel.State.Gov. website
January 2, 2024	Received signed postcard confirming embassy had received passport
January 3, 2024	Status shows “approved” and will be delivered on/around January 6
January 3, 2024	Status changed to “mailed” to the US embassy in Paris
January 10, 2024	Received email: passport has been received in Paris; will be mailed in 2 days
January 12, 2024	Passport delivered to our home mailbox

Just to end with some interesting points:

• According to the American Communities Project, 56% of adult Americans own a valid passport—higher numbers in big city suburbs (64%) and lower numbers among evangelicals (38%).
• The concept for the world’s first passport is thought to have originated during the reign of King Artaxerxes I of Persia, 465-424 BC, who gave a letter to an official requesting his safe passage through Judea. 
• The French word passeport originated around 1420 when King Henry V requested safe passage for merchandise through the port of Lyon. Four years later that applied to people as well. 
• In 1976, the mummy of King Ramses II arrived in France with an Egyptian passport listing his occupation as King (deceased). 
• The 2004 Stephen Spielberg movie, Terminal, that starred Tom Hanks, was based on an Iranian who was unable to provide proper documents, including a passport, to authorities in several European countries and ended up spending 18 years in the CDG airport in Paris.

US Passport application status: https://passportstatus.state.gov/

Follow a La Poste envelope: https://www.laposte.fr/outils/suivre-vos-envois

Note: I could not find anything online about notifying the Préfecture that my US passport number had changed so I did this: I emailed our local Préfecture who had issued my 10-year carte de résident who replied via email that any changes would be noted when the carte is up for renewal at the end of 10 years. Using postal mail, return receipt requested, I sent two copies of the information page of my new passport to the Préfecture in Montpellier where my application for citizenship is in process. I had read of one applicant who was chastised at her interview for not informing the Préfecture of the change in her passport number.