[JonathonMcintosh]

Yeah I am British with a British passport yes

[IanFromHKG]

For those of you from participating countries (including those who, like me, are permanent residents in Hong Kong) I will let you into a – well, it isn’t really a secret, but surprisingly few eligible people seem to know about it – the APEC Business Travel Card (aka ABTC). These wonderful little cards save me many passport pages every year. The way it works is this:

You apply to your home authority (in my case, as a Hong Kong PR, to the Hong Kong Immigration Department – it doesn’t matter that I am not a HK citizen, although in most countries citizenship is required) with a supporting letter from your employer saying you travel a lot for business. They then write to all the participating countries asking if they will allow you the relevant immigration privileges for that country. About three months later, they write back to you indicating which countries are permitting you the privileges, and ask if you want to wait for them all to reply, or have the card issued immediately. Eventually, for a pretty nominal fee (HK$427, about GBP35) you get a card, the size of a credit card, with a list of country codes on the back (mine are BRN, CHL, CHN, HKG, IDN, JAP, KOR, MEX, MYS, NZL, PHL, SGP, THA, VNM). The card lasts for three years, and gives you (in relation to the countries listed on your own card):
* Fast-track immigration
* Multiple-entry visa-free access for up to 59 days each time

In addition, although these countries are not yet full participants, ABTC-holders can use crew lanes at immigration checkpoints in the US, Canada and the Russian Federation!!

As you can imagine, this saves me many many pages of visas, and a bundle of cash (a single-entry PRC visa alone would cost a significant multiple of the price of the card)

More information here: http://www.businessmobility.org/key/abtc.html

Now, before all the Brits and continental Europeans get terribly excited about this – eligibility requirements apply! To get the card you must be a passport-holder of a participating country (or a Hong Kong PR, the sole exception). The participating jurisdictions are:

Australia, Brunei, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam

[Phil_in_LA]

Hi all!

I hope that someone is still monitoring this page as there has been some great advice in previous posts and I’m pretty new to this whole situation!

My problem is that my US visa expires in July and my UK passport in September now I need to renew my UK passport but can’t send my current passport back as I need to keep hold of my visa for travel purposes (and the fact that it would be quite scary living here without a copy of my visa!). I believe that I am eligible for a second passport but will they give me problems if I send my application in without my current passport or should I send my current passport in the hope that they return it to me?

Thanks in advance!

Phil

[MartynSinclair]

When i applied for my second passport, i didnt need to send my first passport in.

[LuganoPirate]

I believe you can apply to renew your UK passport up to 9 months before the expiry of the old one?

[FormerlyDoS]

Phil

You need to make an application for a new passport and will have to include a letter from your employer to justify the reason for a grant of a second passport. If you are self employed, you could get your accountant to write this letter for you.

You will need to jump through the hoops, though, getting photos signed etc (or at least I had to do so in 2005, when I got mine.)

When I did mine, I justified it on the grounds of needing multiple visas every year and having to make business trips whilst a passport was away for visa processing, which was accepted. IIRC, I had to write a list of countries I expected to visit in the next 12 months.

I’ve just renewed that second passport and it was easy, just like renewing one’s first passport.

To build on Lugano’s point, one can apply for a new passport at any stage (e.g. my 48 pager was full after only 8 years) but the maximum extension to the life of the new passport that will be granted is 9 months.

My new passport arrived with a start date of November 2012 and an expiry of Aug 2023.

[FormerlyDoS]

Phil

Your other option is to make a personal visit to the passport office in Victoria, using the premium service.

You can get a new document very quickly that way, might be worth considering if you have to come to the UK in the meantime.

https://www.gov.uk/get-a-passport-urgently

[KeithThomas9]

Why would you want to take both. As you stated, “Never change Passports in a Foreign Country. The whole purpose as far as I am concerned is, to apply for Visas with one Passport, whilst still being able to travel overseas on the second.

[DuffieldDan]

Applying for a second passport for the first time.
I have a question wrt filling out form C1. I am assuming that in section 4 I answer NO as this application is completely seperate from my first passport and refers only to my second passport.

[Phil_in_LA]

Hi all, thanks for your help and sorry for my very late response. I thought I would check back in to let you know how I went about it.

I actually just applied for a new passport as I didn’t need my current one for the a couple of weeks while it processed. They sent me back my old passport (which is still valid and has my visa in it) along with my new passport. This probably isn’t the way to go about getting a second passport for business travel but it worked for my situation.

Thanks and good luck

Phil

[Rallyman]

I had two passports for many years and, having followed all the procedures mentioned above, never had any difficulty (I didn’t even need to specify which countries I was traveling to but it’s a good idea nevertheless).

Once you’ve got two it’s a good idea not to let one lapse without renewing it as for some reason the UKPA system still considers it ‘live’. I tried to renew my lapsed second passport as I was traveling to a country that needed a longer validity period than in my first one but they initially rejected it as a third application…

So once you’ve got a second passport keep renewing both and treat them as security for each other in case you lose one!

[Jonitaly1]

Is it a problem if i am an expat living in italy and the request letter comes from an italian company?

[LJRP1972]

My advice to anyone living in SE England is to avoid the Victoria Passport Office at all costs. Both my partner and I booked an appointment there to obtain a second passport each. We were both asked to redo our photographs (as were 40-50% of the other people with us) based on highly subjective and spurious claims not mentioned anywhere in any literature or on websites i.e. background too pale, head has slight tilt. You will need to queue at the photo booths, have 5 x £1.00 coins and they will take all five photos from you. Be prepared to wait for up to one hour during the day to queue at the cashiers to pay and do not expect the staff at the passport counters to be anything other than rude, obnoxious, unhelpful and condescending. If you’re heavily pregnant, like I am, the whole experience is even more uncomfortable.

[LuganoPirate]

Jonitaly, makes no difference which jurisdiction the company is based in, you can still apply for a second passport so long as you have a good reason for having one.

[DavidGordon10]

LJRP at 14.49 on 29/7 – sorry to disagree, but I have been to the Victoria office four times in the last year and found it very helpful: a vast improvement from the old Petty France setup.

The only point I would add is that the requirements for a new second passport have got more detailed, the letter from your company or organisation needs information on which countries you will go to for which you need the second passport, because of long visa waits or similar.

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