Americans: Applied for a passport recently? You'll be waiting a while.

[randomness]

(From http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-passports20jun20:)"

"Desperate to obtain their U.S. passports, world travelers have been flying to Seattle, where the passport office is considered one of the nation's most efficient. But even there, more than 110,000 backlogged applications are piled in closets, the supervisor's office and the break room.

"Many won't be touched for months. Half of the staff is trying to help the crowds jamming the lobby and spilling out the door."

http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-passportdiary13jun13 has one reporter's diary of getting her passport renewed.

"I also had an interview this morning with Colin Walle, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1998, and he tells me the passport backlog is close to 3 million. The good news: The backlog has shrunk in the last couple of weeks. The bad news: The backlog was only 1.3 million in February."

"In testimony on Tuesday in the Senate, Maura Harty, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, said the backlog was indeed 3 million. That 500,000 number was the number that had already taken longer than 10 to 12 weeks."

(Today seems to be my day of "stupid government tricks" posts.)

Comments

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness I took care of this in December...

[tla]

If they have six months left, they should all come to London. My renewal took two weeks in May.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I need to get additional pages put into my passport and will probably leave North America to do it. Going to London would be fitting, really, because that's where I got the passport in the first place, while bookly and I waited, as a replacement for a lost passport, just before September 11, 2001.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Wah! *prays and pays all the expedite fees*

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

The second LA Times article I quoted includes a link to http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2007/05/the_erratic_sta.html
which has some suggestions on what you can do if you're stuck.

Good luck! *hugs*

[dirque.livejournal.com]

I always spend the money on 1-day expedite. But that's cause mom is in New york.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

"Expedited" service is no longer 1-day:

"We know of people who have received expedited passports in four weeks, others who have received them in five weeks and others for whom the expedited process has taken longer"

"We’ve also talked with two people who paid an additional hefty premium (between $200 and $300) to a “fixer” located next door to the passport office on 19th Street in Washington, D.C. and had their new passports back within 36 hours."

(From http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2007/05/the_erratic_sta.html)

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness I have until 2011... maybe I should get the process started now. (But nooo, I don't want a passport with an RFID chip ever!)

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Ha! I just did a Mahalo page on this (http://www.mahalo.com/New_Passport_Rules).