I am writing this letter to inform you of the reason why we are applying for new passports even though they haven’t expired yet. We are applying for new passports because travelling with our present passports is becoming more and more of a complication. Back when we made our passports, they did not come with the computereized magnetic strips to scan. This has become more and more of an issue recently because they can’t just be swiped and scanned when we are traveling. The immigration officers and people at the check-in counters have to input our information by hand and have been giving us a hard time as a result. Recently my son was stopped by airport customs because they suspected his passport to be a fake. The reason they assumed it was fake was because everything was hand-written and it had no magnetic strip to scan. We have been advised on many occasions to get updated passports with the magnetic strips to avoid any future hassles.