Travel for new passport

It was unconscionable for the Embassy of Malta in Washington DC, USA to require all Maltese citizens residing in the US who apply for, or wish to renew a Maltese passport after January 1, 2009, to travel to Washington in person in order to obtain the new biometric document. Citizens wishing to apply or renew were given till the end of this year if they wished to avoid having to travel in order to obtain their passports. According to the president of the Maltese-American Community Club of Dearborn, Michigan, USA, there are an estimated 5,000 people holding only Maltese passports residing in the Detroit area alone. In terms of overall numbers the Detroit-area Maltese community comes second only to the one in New York. Both of these are quite a distance from Washington, other Maltese communities are even further away.

Surely, the Embassy in Washington must have the resources to deal with passport requests in a manner that does not unduly inconvenience our citizens abroad.