Passport and visa application

Hello all!

I need your wisdom on this one, as I have no idea what to do. I might get a job in the US next month (I'm a US citizen) and planning to apply for the Tier 1 Visa PSW around October. My doubt is the following: If I get the job it will mean I will have to travel 40% of the time. Since the travelling will involve going to Latin America, I know I will need my passport no matter what. So, I don't want the company to know I'm applying for the UK visa until I know I will have it for sure... keeping this in mind, there is no way I could be without a passport for weeks. My plan is to send my passport which has my UK Student Visa (now expired), and apply for another passport in the US so I can keep traveling. Do you reckon this will be possible? And if so... what implications will I have to have two passports?- I assume the one that will have the visa will be cancelled, since by then I should have a new one.

Just to clarify, my passport does not expire until 2016.

Or I'm totally out of my mind and what I'm planning to do is just out of the question?

Thank you so much in advance

You can definitely get a second valid passport.  They're good for two years and they seem to be running around $130 these days.  I got a second valid last year and if I remember correctly, I had to demonstrate an urgent need for it (i.e. air reservations, but not necessarily ticketed) in order to get it.  The most important part about carrying two passports is to remember which passport you're traveling on!  It can look really weird to customs officials if you don't know what you're doing at the booth and fiddling around with multiple travel documents.  Here's a link from PVE for their 2nd valid service: http://www.passportvisasexpress.com/passports/second-valid-passport.xml

Good luck!

And just a reminder that second valid passports are actually discretionary, so the US doesn't have to give them to you.  Ideally you should really avoid it if at all possible, but you full term passport should be what you send to the UK VSD and the second valid passport should be what you use to travel on while it is submitted, but as devinshire says, immigration officials may look odd at limited validity passports.

Thank you so much for your answers.

If I do get the job I will have to get the second passport since the travelling is a must. I really can't stay that long without that document.