Why US passports are so delayed right now

While the summer travel season is always jam-packed, Americans wanting to fly internationally are facing a significant hurdle: a massive delay in the issuance of new passports. 

The U.S. State Department, which updated its time frame this past March, says it's "processing routine [passport] applications in 10 to 13 weeks and expedited applications in seven to nine weeks." However, this does not include mailing periods, and "it may take up to two weeks for us to receive your application after you mail it to us and up to two weeks for you to receive your completed passport after we mail it to you," the State Department noted.

Many travelers, though, are "finding that the wait is well beyond that," NPR reported, "leaving trips abroad compromised and travelers scrambling for refunds on airfare and lodging." While the passport process has always been longwinded, why is the State Department taking longer than ever to issue new documents?

Why is it taking so long?

As with many things, it can mostly be blamed on the post-Covid-19 era. The pandemic's choke hold on international tourism has long since waned, and as a result, "interest in international travel has picked up in turn, causing a surge in applications for new or renewed passports," NPR reported. The sheer volume of applications is leading to a backlog in passport issuance. 

When the pandemic first hit, "the federal government reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports and let contractors go," according to the Chicago Tribune. Many of these staffers have still not returned, resulting in a shortage of people available to process passports. These shortages come as the State Department is working to process anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 applications per week, the Tribune reported, and that number is expected to keep rising. There were a record 22 million passports issued in 2022, according to State Department statistics. This figure will likely be surpassed in 2023, as the 500,000 applications per week are reportedly 30% to 40% higher than last year's pace.

During a House Appropriations Subcommittee budget hearing this past March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that "the bottom basically dropped out of the system" during the pandemic, per CBS News. Once the Covid threat subsided, Blinken said, the State Department saw an "unprecedented demand" for new passports. 

When will it get back to normal?

Likely not in 2023. The government is "working hard to get back to our pre-pandemic processing times by the end of calendar year 2023," a State Department spokesperson told CNN. The spokesperson added that, despite the ongoing delays, they were meeting promised processing times for new passports in the "vast majority of cases."

Given that there's an ongoing shortage of staff, the State Department is also working on "hiring, training and retaining staff to address the current surge in demand," the spokesperson said. "We have increased staffing levels and have hundreds of additional staff in the hiring pipeline." 

The State Department had also halted an online renewal platform for existing passports to "make sure that we can fine-tune it and improve it," Blinken said, per Time. This program is expected to be back online by the end of 2023, Blinken told Congress, which he believes will also help ease pressure on passport-processing employees.