State Department redeploys staff to ease passport crisis

[babylonsister]

State Department redeploys staff to ease passport crisis
By Warren P. Strobel and Ryan LaFontaine | McClatchy Newspapers


NEW ORLEANS — The mail truck is not a welcome sight at the New Orleans Passport Agency.

On a recent Thursday, it dropped off 6,700 new passport applications. That’s considered a good day.

“Tuesday is really our big day,” said Phil Pusateri, a customer service manager at the center. “We usually get about 20,000 to 30,000 applications every Tuesday because they’re still coming in over the weekend.”

Thursday’s mail truck was a small rivulet in a flood of demands for passports this year that has swamped the State Department, prompting long lines outside passport offices, jammed call centers and angry congressmen demanding answers from bureaucrats.

Across the nation, Americans have risked missing long-planned vacations, having wedding plans fouled or being unable to travel overseas to attend to the sudden death of a relative. In the State Department, officers whose job was to monitor major world crises are now poring through passport applications.

The immediate culprit is a three-year-old law called the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. It took effect in January, requiring that Americans traveling by air from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean have passports.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/18445.html

[UTUSN]

1. 10 wks? I don't THINK so!!1 When I applied on 4-10, I was told 8 to 10 wks.

The State dept website only shows their receipt of the application, with the status remaining at "In Process," forever until you get it. We are now into Week 15.

Their 800 # recording says they don't want calls unless your trip is within the next 2 weeks. And if you play by the menu, you can wait 20 minutes only to be told ultimately that your call can't be taken due to high traffic. But, actually, you can get through by working around the menu: As soon as the recording starts press 1 for English, then 3, then (I think) 0.

My gripes are irrelevant to the point that I personally will not be required to have one until January of '08. My real point is that this law/regulation was TOTALLY an UNNECESSARY, RANDOM OVER-REACTION. Typical wingnut thinking and problem "solving."