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We are currently living in Europe, my spouse applied for US passport renewal, we went to US embassy with the application and listed city and country where she was born.

Officer stated that we need to change the country since at the time of application the city belongs to a new country recognized by the US, or we can omit the country and just leave the city. She also stated that we will get info about this in the mail. We omitted the country and left the city only. No further info was given to us at that time.

10 days later we got the passport listing city only. 15 days later we got the pamphlet witch states following,

"Passport applicants who opt for the city or town of birth designation should be aware that they may encounter difficulties in travelling to , or obtaining visas for entry into, certain foreign countries. "

If we were aware of this at the time of the application we would list the new country without any questions. So now we are stuck with this " may encounter difficulties" over our head.

What would you do?

Benn
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4 Answers4

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NZ and SA passport here. Both list my city of birth as Pietermaritzburg, and don't mention country.

76+ countries later, no problems for me with regards to this. The only problems I've had have been with the "uruwhenua' on the front of the NZ passport (one officer thought it was Uruguay), and the example photo in the NZ passport used to not match the owner's photo....that was problematic in Central Asia.

Mark Mayo
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This probably isn't a going to be a big issue for you. For example, New Zealand passports only list the city of birth, and not the country. This does not appear to be a significant problem (or any problem) for New Zealand passport holders.

Greg Hewgill
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None of my passports ever had a birth place stated. I have been to 56 countries without issues.

A handful of times an airline check-in person would tell me something like There is an error in your passport to which I just state that it is optional. Sometimes they ask another staff member if that is possible, which just takes them a few seconds, but I have never been delayed at any immigration.

Bottom line is that it is a generic warning, I get that too with each passport renewal, but really it does not have much impact for travelers.

Itai
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I've had some minor issues related to this. US passports typically only list the state where a person is born. When I moved to the Netherlands, some of the paperwork for registering at City Hall required the city where I was born. As it was not in my US passport, I had to go through a fairly lengthy process to get a legalized copy of my birth certificate (including an Apostille) just so they could record the city where I was born.

Eric
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