For the first time, State Department offices and many post offices will be accepting passport applications on a Saturday, for a March 28 event designated as “National Passport Day.”
The idea is to call attention to the looming June 1 deadline for the final phase of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), when most U.S. citizens will be required to have passports or passport cards when returning to the U.S. by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda.
Brenda Sprague, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for passport services, said “we simply were not ready” when the WHTI prompted a surge of passport applications in 2007, generating a processing backlog and lengthy delays.
But she says they’re ready now.
Sprague said the department increased the number of adjudicators who handle passport applications from 700 to 1,300, and increased processing capacity to print as many as 30 million passports a year.
It appears, however, that this capacity won’t be needed right away because the recession has taken its toll. From a high of 18.4 million in 2007, the number of new passports and renewals fell to 16 million last year, and is expected to decline further to 12 million this year.
What concerns Sprague more than the overall volume, however, is a spike in demand as the WHTI deadline looms.
Sprague’s boss, assistant secretary for consular affairs Janice Jacobs, said the State Departtment is encouraging people to apply now, with stepped-up advertising and public outreach efforts, such as National Passport Day.
Sprague anticipates that, human nature being what it is, many travelers will still wait too long, triggering a surge of applications in the summer months, after the June 1 deadline.
And despite the additional processing capacity, Sprague said the turnaround time for passport applications isn’t going to get much shorter. Four weeks, she said, is going to be “the new normal,” and four to six weeks may be the norm for the summer.
Part of the reason, she said, is that the department is taking additional steps to scrutinize applications and verify documents in the wake of what she called the recent GAO “sting” operation, in which an undercover operative from the Government Accountability Office used forged documents to obtain valid passports.
Sprague said the event “upset us greatly,” and prompted a brief halt to all processing for a complete review of procedures.