America is experiencing unprecedented passport delays, and one senator says it is just another unexpected effect of COVID-19. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said a number of events during the coronavirus pandemic have led to a “perfect storm” creating record delays.
“We've got this perfect storm with three things happening,” Warner said. “One, hiring freezes. Two, you have seen a drop in the fee because people weren’t traveling. Then three, you now got everybody wanting to travel all at once.”
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Warner said there is a record number of people requesting passports due to putting off travel and renewals during the pandemic. Plus, government hiring freezes during COVID-19 mean that fewer people have been able to process the requests.
“It used to take a normal passport about eight to 10 weeks,” the senator said. “To get an expedited passport, you pay 60 bucks and get it in six to eight weeks.”
Now the normal time to get a passport has been extended by weeks and sometimes months. Warner spoke to a family who came down from New York to the Washington, D.C., office to renew their passport and another man who had been waiting six months for his passport. It is becoming common to send people across the country for an appointment.
One person from Washington, D.C., was given the option of an appointment in Los Angeles or San Juan, Puerto Rico. A guard at the passport agency in Los Angeles said he came across a guy living in Los Angeles being given appointments in Hawaii. We asked what could be done to keep people's appointments at least in their own time zone.
“It is what it is. There are 29 passport agencies,” Warner said. “So I think we need to press them, I need to press the same, how during this surge we reach the appointment? You know, move it to give better preference to people in the region so you don’t have to schlep across the whole country or across three time zones.”
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His solution is to raise passport fees and hire more people. He didn't have great news, saying these delays could take months to overcome and that travelers might be missing their international trips this year.
"Don't book that international trip two weeks from now if you don't have a passport," Warner said. “I don’t think we're going to see real relief, frankly, until next year.”