Passport wait times double for U.S. travelers
WASHINGTON — The State Department is struggling to work through some 2 million passport applications as a crush of COVIDvaccinated Americans try to head out on summer vacations, leading to big delays and canceled trips for many.
Processing times have doubled from the prepandemic norm, with passport requests now taking 12 to 18 weeks, up from six to eight weeks before the virus hit.
State Department officials on Wednesday said they are working to reopen passport offices and get staff back to work as quickly as possible. They’re also hiring new workers and contractors to help cut down on the backlog of 1.5 to 2 million passport applications.
Still, applications not already in the pipeline won’t get processed until well into the fall, officials say. And many still waiting might want to start rethinking summer plans.
The State Department is surging staff back into the office across the country as COVID restrictions ease, said Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services Rachel Arndt. “As the travelers were ramping up with the vaccines available, the workload started coming in faster than we would normally see.”
Because they work on systems
and databases only accessible from passport offices for security reasons, staff who process passports have to be physically present in offices to do so, Arndt said. Passports also must be printed and mailed from those offices. That means very few applications were processed during the pandemic, and the agency is scrambling to catch up.
Some Texans have already had to cancel trips because of the delays.
Poojan John, a 33-year-old engineer who lives in Cypress, started trying to apply for a passport for her newborn baby in February, hoping her family might be able to make it on two planned trips to Mexico this spring and summer, where they could finally introduce their “COVID baby” to family and friends.
But John couldn’t get an appointment to have the child’s picture taken and submit her application materials to the post office until May.
By then it was already going to be too late to make the first trip, with a couple dozen family members and friends. But she paid to have the application expedited in hopes she might still be able to make her best friend’s wedding in Cancún in July.
The passport arrived finally this month, but all of the hotel rooms in the wedding block were booked and other hotels in the area were too expensive, so they had to cancel that trip, too, John said. Several of her friends who were invited to the wedding are still waiting for passports and canceling, too, she said.
“I have not seen my best friend since COVID started. She was going to meet my baby,” John said. “It puts you into emotional turmoil. You want to say that … ‘If I had booked it, just hoping it would arrive, maybe I could have made it to the wedding, maybe I could have seen my best friend’s most important moment in her life.’ ”
“Not being able to do that — especially not seeing her in such a long time — it’s kind of a big deal, honestly,” she said. “I know there are bigger problems in the world, but in my world this is kind of a big deal.”
Seeking answers
John was one of more than 120 Texans who reached out to U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Houstonarea Republican, asking his office to help in May and June. Now McCaul is urging the department to staff up faster.
“After enduring travel restrictions during the pandemic, Americans across the country are eager to reconnect with family and friends and create new memories through their travels. I am frustrated to learn many of my constituents have missed important work travel, vacations and even honeymoons because of the backlog of passports,” McCaul said in a statement.
“It is time the department return to full staffing levels to address to the passport processing delays.”
McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the Democrat who chairs the committee, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week asking for answers on the delay, as well as what Congress can do to help speed things along.
Arndt said there are more than 150 State Department employees returning to 21 agencies to process passports, and as of this week, offices in 17 cities were fully staffed. The agency is also expanding overtime work while it tries to hire more staff, Arndt said.
Some of those who have been able to get passports in time for trips have had to get congressional help to do so.
‘A complete nightmare’
Gregg Friedman, who runs a boutique design agency in Austin, first submitted an application in April, thinking he was leaving plenty of cushion before a July 10 trip to the Bahamas for a reunion with his wife’s side of the family — an annual trip canceled last year because of the pandemic. At the time, the State Department claimed processing times were 10 to 12 weeks, he said.
But eventually, that number jumped to 18 weeks, said Friedman, 44. So he and his wife started calling the passport office, with little luck. At one point his wife left the phone on hold for six hours before someone picked up. They took her credit card information to upgrade to an expedited process, but said there would be no way to confirm the upgrade until they saw a charge on the card. The charge never went through.
“We were basically just left in this kind of black hole of no information and not sure what to do,” Friedman said. “We heard that they were just overwhelmed, they were at half staff … It was a complete nightmare.”
Eventually they were told to try and book an in-person appointment. Friedman said they’d be willing to go to Houston, or even Miami, if they could get a meeting. They logged on every night at midnight when new slots were supposed to be posted, but without fail, they were already taken.
By early July, someone suggested Friedman reach out to his congressman, McCaul, whose office submitted a congressional request on his behalf. On Friday, the day before he was supposed to fly out, he got an update from McCaul’s office that the passport had been mailed to him.
By Saturday, it still hadn’t arrived. Friedman drove his wife and kids to the airport and headed back home.
“There was a UPS person at my door. I open the package and it was my passport,” Friedman said.
He booked a flight out the next day.