If you visit the U.S. State Department’s official website, travel.state.gov, it gives you an approximation of the processing times it’s currently taking to get a new or renewed passport. This is what the website says at the moment:
If the photo is too small, they say routine processing is taking 10-12 weeks, expedited processing (where you pay extra for the process to happen faster) is 4-6 weeks and expedited at the agency will only happen if you have international travel within 72 hours.
However just over a year ago, in January 2020, these were the times:
So at that point, they said 6-8 weeks for routine processing, 2-3 weeks for expedited, and 8 business days if expedited at the agency.
That’s….quite a difference. Like, upwards of 50% longer.
The Times According to USA Passport Waiting
Passport Waiting Time is a private entity that uses crowdsourced information to report the actual average length of time it takes for U.S. citizens to get their passports.
Here’s a timeline over the past couple of years.
June 2019:
January 2020:
Of course, in the summer of 2019, we were under a different administration, and many of the government’s staff were only “acting” heads. So lots of government agencies were a mess; I’ll give them that. The fact that waits were extended by upwards of a week between the summer of 2019 and the first month of 2020 shouldn’t have been surprising. But then this happened:
March 2020: COVID Closures
Starting in March 2020, passport agencies were, of course, closed for months because of COVID, which gave them a backlog of over 2,000,000 passports. It took a while (a LONG while), but the agency offices eventually all opened at full capacity, and they eventually caught up.
Here’s the most recent update from Passport Waiting Time:
March 2021:
Still pretty much the same as it was a year ago.
Why the delay now?
Welp, they can’t blame it on a clueless administration or people in charge who are only “acting” in their roles. And as long as all the processing centers are processing, they can’t blame COVID. So what’s the excuse now?
From travel.state.gov:
Use USPS’ Priority Mail Express
We are experiencing delays in receiving passport applications due to unprecedented mail volume and other COVID-19 impacts on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). If you plan to expedite your passport application due to upcoming travel plans, we recommend that you send your application using USPS’ Priority Mail Express.
Yep, let’s just blame the Post Office.
Sigh.
OK, so the good news is that, as per Passport Waiting Time, getting your passport back isn’t taking nearly as long as what the government says it could take. The bad news is that they never went back to the 3 weeks and change they were reporting for a new passport, back in July 2019.
Oh, and by the way – average wait time in August 2018, as per Passport Waiting Time? 18 days.
Feature Photo: pxhere
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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