Can you imagine shelling out 3,000 non-refundable dollars for a trip to Ireland only to be told you wouldn’t be allowed to go because the passport you applied for three months ago has yet to arrive in the mail? Sickening isn’t it? You bet it is. Just ask my 17-year-old cousin who is supposed to be days away from leaving on a high school band trip to Europe.
In my previous blog I covered the new changes in the passport laws. As of yesterday, the federal government temporarily waived its new anti-terrorism rules and lifted the requirement that U.S. passports be used for travelers flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. That’s great if those are the destinations you are traveling to, but that doesn’t help all the other travelers who are visiting other foreign lands and desperately need a passport.
If you don’t know by now, the State Department is facing severe criticism right now. Ever since the government instituted tighter passport rules post-9/11 (basically, Congress decreed that Americans would have to have a passport for all flights out of the country), the State Department can’t keep up with applications. According to federal officials, in the first six months of this year, the State Department has issued almost 9 million passports — 33% more than last year, which itself was a record year for passport applications.
According to one lawmaker, the backlog for passports has reached a “crisis level.” One legislator from New Mexico recently told reporters: “To say people must have a passport to travel and not give people a passport is right up there in the stupid column.”
To understand the ire that this backlog has caused you must first understand that the State Department has been telling travelers applying for passports that applications would be processed in 45 to 50 working days. However, some people have been waiting upwards of six months for their passports. Which takes us back to my cousin and her planned school band trip to Ireland.
She along with about a half dozen other band members applied for their passports in January—well in advance of their June trip. Five months and about six dozen phone calls later my cousin and the other students still haven’t received their passports… and the trip that they already forked over $3,000 (each) for is set to begin in six days.
Long story short, on Monday my aunt along with the parents of the other children will be driving down to the regional center in Chicago to camp out in order to get passports issued in time for the band trip. As of yesterday, the line around the building issuing the passports was reportedly four blocks long. But their story is nothing out of the ordinary. Five members from a Spanish Club at a neighboring high school had to do the same thing when their passports didn’t arrive in time for a scheduled trip to Costa Rica. Then there is the report out of Washington, D.C. where after 4 months of waiting one set of parents who still did not receive their children’s passports for a family trip to Italy drove from their home in South Carolina to a regional center in D.C.– there are only 13 of these centers around the country – and stood in line for 11 hours to secure the needed passports.
According to the Travel Industry Association, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people with airline reservations have been impacted by the backlogs, though the number is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.
Do you have a passport horror story?
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