Expired passports: To shred or not to shred?

In the comments’ section to an article I wrote last month, Paper clutter begone, part 4, there was considerable debate about whether a person should shred his or her expired passports. In the article, I advocated shredding these documents to help prevent against identity theft. Although I trusted my original source, I went through the process of renewing my passport to test the information that I received for our Unclutterer readers.

Last Monday morning, I got in line at the National Passport Agency office without any of my expired passports, and, a few hours later, I was issued a new passport.

I now can tell you with 100 percent certainty that a legal U.S. citizens can be issued a new passport without having a stack full of expired passports in hand. Never once during my experience did the passport agent ask to see my passport from when I was 10 years old. In fact, from the information off of my official state-issued birth certificate, the agent was able to pull up all of my old passport information on his computer.

Again, there may be a special circumstance that requires you to hold on to your expired passports. If you fall into a special circumstance, then do not shred your expired passports. However, if you have a stack of expired passports in your house that a burglar could steal from you or you could accidentally lose, then rest assured that you do not have to keep them to get future passports.

For clarity purposes, please remember that my article did not advocate shredding current passports. If you are applying for a passport renewal by mail, you can submit your current passport as a form of documentation for citizenship. Check the National Passport Agency’s website for further details.

I hope that if there were any of you out there who were worried about shredding your expired passports that this helps to put your mind at ease.

Posted by Erin on Jun 6, 2007 | Comments

6 comments posted

  1. Posted by Raf - 06/06/2007

    Reasons why I keep my passports which expired years ago:

    1) Most recent passport has the only picture in a govt ID where I look good.
    2) Immigration stamps for foreign countries are sentimental souvenirs of trips past
    3) Curiosity factor: Have stamps of countries/states which no longer exist (USSR, Hong Kong as UK colony, Macau as Port colony

  2. Posted by Raf - 06/06/2007

    4) Curiosity factor 2: Have passport stamps of European countries that no longer do that since they came under Schengen.

  3. Posted by adora - 06/06/2007

    I keep my all expired passports and there are many of them because I have multiple citizenships. Sometimes you need the old visas on the expired passport to apply for new ones.

    US citizens probably don’t have to worry about it because the US custom is the one that’s actually a pain in the neck about the date and location of your last issued visa, last entry dates… Sometime the stamps are blurry that I can’t read it anyway.

    It is not impossible to apply for visa without the previous record, which BTW should be kept in the government database, but they will ask you many questions like that’s the only travel in your lifetime and you should remember all the details. You will have to present a lot more documents to support your case. I’d keep that 32 page booklet.

    I do trash all my expired passports without any visas and entry stamps right after I got my renewal. I also try to keep only one previous visas from each country.

  4. Posted by Jan - 06/06/2007

    You might be required to file the dates and countries you visited over the last 10 years. This is true of foreigners going through the immigration process. It might also be true for US citizens working at government contractors, and trying to obtain a higher clearance level.

  5. Posted by jazzle - 06/07/2007

    The standard thing to do for expired UK passports is to cut off a corner.

  6. Posted by Erika - 06/07/2007

    I agree, shred them, but keep one if you do not have a current, because expired passports can be used as proof of identity even if you don’t have a current one.

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