It's getting harder and harder to get a new U.S. passport. The backlog of orders is being hampered by endless bureaucracy as travel globally recovers to pre-pandemic levels and there are not enough staff to meet the high demand.
Getting a valid U.S. passport seems to be an odyssey. Travelers who want to face days of uncertainty: waiting, worrying, standing in line, refreshing the website, writing to Congress, paying onerous fees, and following instructions that turn out to be incorrect.
In fact, some applicants buy additional tickets to get passports elsewhere before making the original trip.
People wait in front of the Los Angeles Passport Agency on Wednesday, June 14. Photo: AP
What are the causes?
The outlook is so bleak that officials do not deny or offer forecasts of when this will end. They attribute it to the shortage of personnel that comes from the pandemic and the suspension of online processes this year.
That left the passport agency with a record 500,000 applications per week and on track to surpass the 22 million passports issued last year, the State Department says.
It was in early March that Ginger Collier, a florist who lives near Dallas, applied for four passports for a family vacation in late June. The agent in charge, Collier says, estimated a waiting period of between eight and 11 weeks, meaning they would have their passports a month before traveling. "Enough time," Collier thought then.
The State Department updated its estimates and said it would be 13 weeks. "We'll still be fine," she thought.
Marni Larsen and her son, Damon Rasmussen of Holladay, Utah, line up in hopes of getting their son's passport. Photo: AP
With two weeks to go, "I couldn't sleep anymore," Collier says. If the passports did not arrive, the family would lose $4,000 and the chance to meet one of their sons, who was studying in Italy.
"I was on edge thinking I won't be able to see him," he recalls. He called the phone number he said every day, sometimes waiting up to 90 minutes to be told—at best—that he could get an appointment in some other state.
"I don't have the money to pay for another four tickets to go to another part of the United States to get a passport, when I applied with enough time," he adds.
They demand answers
By March, frustrated travelers began demanding answers, calling their representatives in the House and Senate, who during recent hearings said they had received more complaints about the passport delay than about any other issue.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Photo: REUTER
"With COVID, the system basically collapsed," Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained to a congressional committee on March 23. When demand for airfare virtually disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government laid off contractors and reassigned employees who were in charge of issuing passports.
Around the same time, the government suspended the online renewal system "to modify and improve it," Blinken said. He said the department is hiring officers as quickly as possible, making more appointments and developing other strategies to deal with the crisis.
The reality in consulates
At U.S. consulates abroad, the situation is not much better.
One day in June, a resident in New Delhi had to wait 451 days for an interview to get a U.S. visa, according to the website. In Sao Paulo the waiting time is 600 days, while in Mexico City it is 750 days and in Bogotá it is 801.
In Israel, the need is particularly acute. More than 200,000 dual Israeli-American nationals live in the country.
More cases
In the United States, Marni Larsen of Holladay, Utah, stood in line in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, to ask for a passport for her son. They wanted to travel to Europe to join the rest of the family, who had already left for Europe for a long-planned vacation.
Larsen applied for his son's passport two months early and spent weeks searching for updates online or through a frustrating call system. Photo: AP
She had applied for her son's passport two months earlier and spent several weeks phoning or checking the website. As the flight date approached in mid-June, he called Sen. Mitt Romney's office, where one of four people assigned to the matter was able to find the document in New Orleans.
The document would go to Los Angeles, where she got an appointment to pick it up. This meant that Larsen had to buy new tickets for herself and her son to Los Angeles and reroute her trip from there to Rome, assuming that the passport would be in Los Angeles as promised.
"We're here, standing in a row with this bunch of people," Larsen said. "This has been a nightmare."
They succeeded. And as for Collier, he also had a happy ending. "I just got the passports!" he texted. He had to spend seven hours at the passport office in Dallas and return the next day, but eventually received the passports four days before the flight.
"What a ridiculous process," Collier said. In spite of everything, the reunion with her son in Italy was sweet. Last week she texted, "It was the best hug in the world!"
Source:AP
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