Passport processing delays threaten international travel plans

The Kucic family did just about everything right to prepare for their trip to Croatia this summer.

They all got vaccinated, booked hotels and a cruise well in advance, and requested a passport for their 19-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter more than 12 weeks before their flight. Then they got the bad news — the passports wouldn’t be ready until long after their trip, and every effort to expedite processing was unsuccessful, Kelly Kucic said.

“(My daughter) and I have been taking Croatian classes together for the last year,” Kelly said, part of the preparation for a trip to her husband’s family homeland that had been in the works long before COVID-19. “She’s so devastated.”

An increase in demand for passports among newly-vaccinated Americans eager to travel after months of pandemic shutdowns, as well as delays affecting the U.S. State Department, have pushed back the processing of new and renewed passports by weeks, throwing Bay Area residents’ international travel plans into disarray.

“It seems like the system is totally not working,” Kucic said, adding that, “If you need a new passport, you better be planning six months out.”

Swapanthi Mandalika-Reeves, the constituent services director at the office of U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, said their office has seen a surge in requests for help with passport applications. They’ve gone from one or two requests a month to 50 in June. A staff member with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said they’ve also seen a significant uptick in requests for help with passports.

“It’s very, very sad to see so many people finally feeling comfortable to travel but not being able to because of this logjam,” Mandalika-Reeves said.

The rise in applications started around May, she said, when many people were starting to receive their second vaccine dose and making travel plans. The office has had success helping constituents who reach out, and there are some options for people with a life-or-death emergency.

Passport applications, which, depending on the time of year, can take as little as 6 to 8 weeks to process, are now expected to take 18 weeks, according to the State Department. Applicants can pay an extra $60 to expedite their application for a 12-week turnaround, compared to as little as 2 to 3 weeks for expedited processing during previous years.

A spokesperson with the State Department said passport processing has been affected by delays at the U.S. Postal Service and the service provider in charge of processing payments and entering applications into the department’s system. The estimated processing times, the spokesperson said, are based on when the department receives the application, not when it’s mailed out.

The Kucic family experienced those delays firsthand. They submitted their applications at a post office, but it didn’t show up on the online tracking system until three weeks later, Kelly Kucic said. They then called to expedite the applications, paying $60 for each of their children, but their payment hadn’t been processed Wednesday, and their applications were still on the normal, slower timeline.

“It’s really frustrating for the average person to understand what’s going on (or) what they should do,” Kelly said.

They have reached out to their elected representatives, including Khanna, and senators Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., with one Feinstein intern telling them her office would try to help but has had hundreds of similar requests.

They also booked an in-person appointment for a non-emergency, urgent passport — even though that option is only available within 72 hours of a booked trip. Appointments are so limited that members in a 5,000-person Facebook group called US Passport and Visa Services constantly exchange tips and even trade appointments, with at least one person creating a separate Facebook page offering to book an appointment, for a price.