When Bethany Premis, Kansas City junior, and her boyfriend, Jeremy Henderson, won a trip to Ensenada, Mexico, from radio station Mix 93.3 for spring break, the station mentioned that they would have to get passports to re-enter the country. Not knowing how long it would take, the couple waited two weeks to start the process.
“I had never been out of the country before,” Premis said. “I didn’t think it was a big deal until we went to the post office.”
After Premis waited in line for two hours, a Lawrence post office employee told her that she would have to expedite her passport, which is a $60 extra fee (in addition to the standard $94), in order to get it before her departure on March 29.
Premis and Henderson are among the millions of travelers headed to Mexico or the Caribbean who have had to expedite their passports since January in order to get them on time for spring break.
The standard process for applying for a passport normally takes about six weeks, but recently,
Since January, the State Department has been overwhelmed by new passport requests. The
In order to help locals to get their passports on time, local Congress offices and post offices are busy helping locals to fill out their forms and to get in touch with the State Department to expedite their passports.
Judy Raney, Postmaster at the Lawrence Post Office on 6th and Vermont, said that the post office has been averaging about 28 passport requests a day, and many of the requests are from students going to Mexico or the Caribbean.
“It’s constantly busy,” she said. “We always have a line.”
Kevin Albrecht, a constituent services aide for Congressman Dennis Moore, said that he has recently had about 10 passport inquiries each day. This is remarkable, he said, because he typically gets only one or two such requests a month.
The biggest problem, he said, is that many people have applied for their passports without paying the expedite fee. When they realize their passport hasn’t arrived yet, he has to contact the passport agency on their behalf in order to get it expedited. He said that about 75% of the time, he is successful.
“It all depends if we’re able to get through to the passport center and if they’re able to locate the application, which is sitting in boxes of tens of thousands of other passport applications,” Albrecht said.
The main cause of the high demand and long delay for passports is the recent Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which now requires all US citizens traveling by air from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean to present a passport in order to re-enter the country. Next year, it will also require passports for travel by land or sea from those regions.
The Homeland Security initiative, which the Departments of State and Homeland Security enacted on Jan. 23, is a response to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that they require all travelers to present legitimate documentation to re-enter the country.
The goal of the Homeland Security initiative, according to the Department of State Web site, is to tighten border security and to smooth the process of entry into the United States for all U.S. citizens and foreign visitors. This will create a standard process that allows the Department of Homeland Security to “quickly, reliably and accurately identify a traveler,” the Web site says.
Largely due to the initiative, passport applications for the fiscal year of 2007 are 44% higher than they were in the same period last year, according to a Congressional memo from the State Department. The State Department said it expects to issue more than 16 million passports this year, compared to 12 million in 2006.
In order to accommodate the surging demand for passports, the National Passport Center is now operating 24 hours a day and has hired 49 new passport adjudicators this month alone. In addition, next year, the State Department plans to build mega-processing center in Arkansas, which will be capable of producing ten million passports per year.
Though the rush may calm down after spring break, it will ramp up again as summer vacation season approaches, Albrecht said. But the biggest increase, he said, will be next year, when the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative will require passports for land and sea travel as well.
Premis received her passport in the mail last week, though the post office told her it would take longer to process. Despite the inconvenience, she said she understood why it is important.
“I can’t complain. It’s a safety precaution we have to take now.”