STATE DEPARTMENT INVITING PASSPORT APPLICANTS AGAIN

Employees back at work catch up on processing backlog

State Department officials say now is a good time to renew an expired passport or apply for a new one, though dozens of countries still do not admit most American tourists because of coronavirus fears.

A large backlog of passport applications that was waiting to be processed when the Bureau of Consular Affairs, which also handles visas, went into lockdown in mid-march has been tackled. Passport processors are now chipping away at applications that have arrived since then.

The slowdown caused by the pandemic hit passport operations particularly hard. Most State Department employees in the United States and overseas have been teleworking, but passports cannot be processed at home for security reasons. So almost 1.8 million applications that were in the pipeline just sat there for three months.

Now, after resuming operations on a limited basis in mid-june, officials say they have worked through the initial backlog and expect to return to normal processing times this fall.

“We’ve gotten through essentially all of the backlog work, and now we’re getting back to a regular rhythm,” Ian Brownlee, the principal deputy in Consular Affairs, said this week in a video chat on the future of international travel hosted on the travel website The Points Guy. “If you’re thinking of traveling nine months out, why not apply now? The thing’s good for 10 years.”

Despite the optimistic outlook, there are still delays. The State Department says it currently takes about 10 weeks to process a passport, from application to delivery in the mail. That’s up from the six to eight weeks it typically took before the pandemic brought almost everything to a halt and the State Department stopped issuing expedited passports, which for an extra fee can get a passport in just two or three weeks.

In the pre-pandemic days, an average of 1.5 million passports were issued every month. In normal times, the 1.8 million passports lined up in mid-march would barely be a blip, but it became a high bar to clear with so many passport processors sent home.

In a sign of the high priority the State Department gives to getting Americans passports, even in a time when few can use them, all passport processors have been declared “mission critical employees.” But the passport centers where they work are only opening gradually, after local health authorities say it is safe for workers to return.

Expedited processing will resume only when the workload nationwide has returned to normal levels.

In the meantime, renewals and new applications can be mailed in, and they will be handled in the order in which they arrive, State Department officials say.

The State Department has dropped a worldwide advisory to avoid all international travel because of the pandemic. But many countries still ban most Americans.

In an Aug. 6 briefing reporters, Carl Risch, the assistant secretary for Consular Affairs, predicted a return to a normal rate of processing passports by late September or early October.

“We want the American people to know that we’re working aggressively to resume normal passport operations and to address Covid-19-related processing delays,” he said.