U.S. swamped with passport requests By ASHLEY M. HEHER, Associated Press Writer
Sat Mar 17, 6:26 AM ET
Thirteen-year-old Eli Rogatz applied months ago for a passport so that he could fly to Israel with his family for his bar mitzvah. To his family's great relief, it finally came through on Friday, with just days to spare. "Given what else is being spent, we want to make sure he's there," Mitch Rogatz, a book publisher from the Chicago suburb of Glencoe, grumbled as he camped out in a federal office building for at least four hours, waiting for the passport.
Similar waiting games are being played out at passport processing sites across the country as the State Department wades through an unprecedented crush of passport applications. They are pouring in at more than 1 million per month.
Passport requests usually shoot up this time of year ahead of the busy spring and summer travel season. But the department has been really swamped since the government in late January started requiring U.S. airline passengers — including children — to show a passport upon their return from Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean.
Passport applications filed between October and March are up 44 percent from the same period a year ago, the department told lawmakers this week. In February alone, applications were up 25 percent.
Because of the glut, it could take 10 weeks instead of the usual six to process routine applications, according to the department. And expedited requests, which cost an extra $60 on top of the normal $97 fee, could take four weeks instead of two.
The State Department said it is working overtime to handle the load and hopes to have an additional 400 passport adjudicators by the end of next year.
That is little solace to travelers like Lisa Purdum, a newlywed from Yardley, Pa., who was told her husband's passport would not arrive until weeks after their planned April 2 honeymoon to Mexico. Worse, her birth certificate, which accompanied her own passport application, was reported missing, she said.
She was one of dozens of people waiting in a line that spilled into the lobby in Philadelphia's regional passport office Friday.
"My husband's is a month behind and mine is missing altogether and our honeymoon is in two weeks, and I'm either losing half my money or all of my money," she said.
People who had not received their passports two weeks before their trips were generally told to go to one of 14 big-city passport offices across the country. There, they were mostly confronted with long lines and no guarantee they would leave with a passport.
Jackie Moore drove overnight from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago, hoping to pick up a passport for her 8-year-old grandson. The family had a 6 a.m. flight Saturday for a vacation in the Dominican Republic, and the boy was the only one whose passport had not arrived.
"My little grandson is going to be heartbroken if we don't get him on this plane," she said.
The line curled around the block outside the passport office in downtown Miami, where 29-year-old Qandeel Sakrani stood with her husband and their two young daughters, hoping to get a passport so she could travel to Pakistan next month.
"I haven't seen my parents in 18 months, and I haven't seen the rest of my family for five years," she said.
Lawndale, Calif., accountant Emilia Moreno sent in an application to renew her passport four weeks ago, only to discover there were no records it ever got there. The 48-year-old woman spent most of the week fighting for an appointment with the passport agency in Los Angeles so she would be able to travel to Italy and France for vacation on Wednesday.
"My employer already told me she's going to buy me a pizza, for me to think that I'm in Italy," she said.
For others, it may already be too late.
Judith Jones was supposed to fly to Jamaica on Friday for a vacation with friends. Instead, she spent a second day in line in Chicago, trying to track down her passport.
"It's supposed to be a girls' trip. The girls are there, but I'm not yet," said the 41-year-old from Griffith, Ind.
About 12 million passport applications were processed in 2006, and as many as 17 million are expected this year, according to the State Department said. Some 74 million Americans have valid passports.
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Associated Press Writers Ron Todt in Philadelphia, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and Solvej Schou in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
In Mexico, you get your mexican passport in one day at any federal office. You hand in your documents in the morning and in the afternoon you have it. It is weird.
What's so weird? I don't know the exact number of passports Mexico issues each year . . . in addition to the number of other migration documents . . . but I'll place a large bet that the number is far fewer than what the USA government processes. In Mexico, for many years . . . the government made it very difficult for it's citizens to obtain passports - well, citizens who didn't have much money. The USA government doesn't practice that type of discrimination, discrimination which is so prevelant in Mexico.
You are so wrong longford. USA has practice that class of discrimination with black citizens, doesn´t it? I don´t know where the hell you got that information, but everybody has the right to obtain a mexican passport, it doesn´t matter if you are poor. Since I have concience all mexican federal offices have given you your passport in one day (no body asks if you have one million dollars in your bank account). It is weird because Mexico has 100 million inhabitants (of whom about the half have requested a passport for traveling aboard) and also has a lot of people requesting passports (or renewals) in vacation periods and all the time you receive your passport in one day. It is just that, despite you are a first world country, you also have problems with bureocracy. Mexico has not practice that kind of discrimination.
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<hr> . . . the government made it very difficult for it's citizens to obtain passports - well, citizens who didn't have much money. <hr></blockquote>
Really? How so? What are the criterias they look for in issuing a passport? Why if they're kind of encouraging people to migrate up there? Why not just make a blockade on the Mexican side to keep people from leaving like they do in the former East Germany? I am sure the American goverment would appreciate that too.
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<hr>but I'll place a large bet that the number is far fewer than what the USA government processes. <hr></blockquote>
Bill apparently is pulling data out of his ass again.
"THERE ARE NO RELIABLE STATISTICS" ("Longford's mantra about Mexico) about the number of U.S. citizens holding passports, but it's somewhere between 7 and 15% (How Many Americans Own Passports?). They are also relatively pricey documents... 97 US Dollars (U.S. State Department passport application data).
Mexicans generally need passports to go about anywhere, so are very, very common. Alas, I don't have the figures, but they aren't a big deal, and I've seen plenty of people using them for everyday identification. Cost: 80 PESOS (Recibo de pasaportes)
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