This year has seen the return of traveling by many Americans as they flock to the airport to escape the confinements of pandemic life. However, with the ability to travel comes necessary identification. Passports are required to travel abroad, and they must be active. The U.S. State Department and Postal Service have admitted that delays in processing are creating delays in receiving a passport, much longer than it was pre-pandemic. Typically, the wait time was around two to three weeks for expedited applications or six to eight weeks for normal applications. Now, expedited applicants can take almost 12 weeks, and normal applications could be as long as 18 weeks. State departments are increasing their staffing to plow through the backlogged nearly 2 million applications.
If you have a trip planned soon, be sure that your passport is up to date and ready to be used. If it expires in the next two to three months, you may want to put in an expedited application as soon as possible.
We must remember that staffing was reduced in these departments due to the pandemic, and thus things are not running at fully capacity in certain areas. A State Department official told the WSJ, “While our dedicated team of passport professionals has returned to our facilities in substantial numbers, we have generally restricted appointments at Department of State public passport agencies to cases involving life-or-death emergencies, and we offer very limited appointments for nonessential travel within 72 hours.”
A Postal Service spokeswoman, Kimberly Frum, gave an update that they have seen larger numbers of applications in the first six months of the year compared to even 2019. So, be aware, and get that application in as soon as you can!
Passport Forms (like applications for first time passports, renewals, and data corrections) can be found at the Travel State government website.
Lastly, you will need Adobe Acrobat to view the PDF forms and applications.