Airfares are going up, checked bags are vanishing, and flights are being canceled in record numbers. There is a new pain point added to the mix. Your options are limited if you need a new passport, and it will cost you.
The prices are going to increase over time.
In-person appointments have been hard to come by for passport applicants. For people who need a passport in five weeks or less, solutions are more limited than ever, because wait times are still longer than before the Pandemic.
The online booking option for appointments at U.S. Passport Agencies was eliminated in the summer of 2016 due to reports of scam artists. People with urgent travel needs now have to wait on the phone for hours to get a spot. If you have proof of travel within 14 days you can book an appointment.
Even if an appointment can be found within the correct time frame, there is no guarantee that it will be in the same city or state as the person applying.
Wildes is the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C. which specializes in immigration law. In the past few months, the number of urgent requests for passport help has dipped, but he is still getting hundreds of them a month.
Immigration attorneys like Mr. Wildes rely on private companies to process passports. This option has narrowed as well.
The services of passport expediters were temporarily halted in March 2020 as a result of the swine flu outbreak. The number of applications that the individual U.S. Passport Agency can handle has been reduced. The prices have gone up in tandem.
In some cases, said David Alwadish, the founder of Its Easy.com, a passport and visa expediting service, the number of passports that these private companies can now handle has been cut by as much as 75%. Private expediters are now charging thousands of dollars.
Mr Wildes said that the fees were through the ceiling.
If you apply for a new passport directly through the U.S. State Department, it can take between eight and 11 weeks. Rush service, which costs an extra $60 and takes anywhere from a few days to three weeks before Covid-19, is currently running. This is an improvement from last year, when the State Department admitted that it could take as long as 18 weeks to process a passport application.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said that his office has been getting a lot of requests for help pushing passport applications through red tape. Mr. Schumer has spoken out about the challenges of applying for a passport. He helped negotiate a budget increase of nearly $211 million for the Bureau of Consular Affairs to help ease the crunch, after calling on the State Department to end "passport purgatory" by increasing staff.
There is lots of pressure from all parts. He said in a call that he thought it was bipartisan. People are applying for passports The dam was up for two years before it broke.
The assistant secretary for consular affairs at the State Department said in an email that the department's budget had been dealt a blow by the swine flu.
She wrote that they have taken several steps to reduce wait times, including instituting overtime for employees, assigning additional staff to adjudicate passports, and hiring additional staff.
The passport imbroglio isn't just costing some Americans money. It costs them time as well.
In May, Paula Knight realized that she, her husband and her daughter needed to renew their passports before they traveled to Mallorca. Her son didn't have one at all.
After paying more than $500 for a private passport expediter in Austin, Texas, she was surprised to be told that it would take five to seven weeks to get her passport.
All of the local passport offices were booked solid for a long time. She had to drive to Texas twice to get her family's documents processed and sent off to the State Department.
She thought she might not get the documents in time. Ms. Knight started calling the National Passport Center's appointment line every morning in hopes of getting a same-day appointment at a U.S. passport agency. She waited on hold for a week and was told the only available appointments were in Hawaii.
It would take me two hours to get a passport in Houston. She said that they have one in Dallas that is five hours away. There isn't anything available." I feel powerless over everything. We are doing everything we were told to do.
Ms. Knight was able to get an appointment in El Paso. She spent hundreds of dollars on a hotel and airfare for herself, her husband and her two children to make it to the appointment before she left for Spain. The family didn't need a same-day appointment after they received their passports by mail. They received a credit for the canceled flight.
Mr. Alwadish said that 75 percent of his customers are choosing to expedite their passports as a result of Ms. Knight's example.
Americans shouldn't travel with a passport that is about to expire. The emergency measure allowing U.S. citizens to return home on expired passports expired in June.
President Biden ordered the creation of an online passport renewal system in December, but it is not up and running yet. The State Department launched a pilot program in February with a limited audience of 25,000 volunteers and are planning for a nationwide launch before the end of the year.
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