December 17, 2023
Help may be on the way if you’ve been waiting months for your passport.
Congress just ordered the State Department to do several things to reduce your wait time and the passport office just opened up tons of in-person passport fairs in December and January where you can go to apply for your passport. I’ll get to that in a second…but first…
I guess Congress heard all your complaints and comments and just added some staff, funding and oversight to the passport process.
I told you in several videos – there was a log jam at the State Department over new passport applications. Not only did the State Department say that there was a record number of applicants who wanted new US passports after the pandemic, but the staffing wasn’t adequate to process all those applications so –the wait time was pushed back to anywhere between seven and ten weeks or more.
Well – in that massive $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act that just passed Congress a few days ago, lawmakers ordered the state department to do something about it immediately and other things in the long run to get this passport mess under control.
First – in the short term the bill authorizes the Secretary of State to immediately expedite the process and directly appoint 80 people to the passport examining division. More bodies who are qualified to process applications will help speed up the approval process.
In the long term — the bill also requires the State Department to report to congress every quarter about passport wait times and the steps the department is taking to reduce that wait time. In six months — it also requires the Secretary of State to come up with and report to the Senate a new strategy to ensure reasonable access to passport services for all Americans to reduce passport processing times for new applications, renewals and emergency passports. It also requires the State Department within two years to establish an in-person location no farther than a 5-hour drive from a major city for people to physically go to get urgent passport services. Congress also wants the State Department to develop an online chat tool so Americans can talk with customer service about their passport status and wait time.
In the meantime the State Department just announced they’re adding tons of dates and times in December and January for more passport fairs. These are events for you to go in person and get your passport paperwork turned in. Generally, they’re for first-time passport applicants and children. If you’re trying to renew a passport, the State Department says you should still do that by mail. But the passport fairs are happening all over the country in places like post offices, libraries and your local government offices. If you want to see the list of locations and dates and times and whether you can just walk in or need an appointment.
More on the passport fairs here.
