Here comes another passport meltdown

Attn: News desks, travel desks

     If you liked last summer’s passport meltdown, you’re just going to love the one that’s coming next summer.

     Americans had to wait 12 weeks or longer to receive passports from the State Department last year, and many were forced to cancel their overseas travel plans because of it.

    The reason? The root cause was congressional enactment of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative to strengthen security at the nation’s 326 border crossing stations, seaports and airports. The first phase took effect last summer, requiring Americans to show passports as proof of citizenship when re-entering the country on a flight that originated in the western hemisphere. Prior to that, Americans could come home from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean islands by merely stating they were U.S. citizens.

     The problem was exacerbated because the State Department, which runs passport operations, failed to anticipate and make preparations for a floodtide of passport applications just prior to the Initiative’s effective date. According to the Government Accountability Office, the State Department estimated it would receive 15 million passport applications, but it actually received 18.6 million of them.

     What an irony! On the one hand, Congress came under intense criticism for failing to build fences on the nation’s borders to keep illegal aliens from entering the country. At the same time, the lawmakers came under equally intense criticism from Americans who were angry because the new passport requirement and the State Department delays were keeping them from leaving the country.

     That was just the Initiative’s first phase. Next June, the second phase will apply the passport requirement to millions of Americans who travel by car to Mexico and Canada (or by boat to other western hemisphere destinations).

     GAO, in a report last week, concluded that the State Department’s preparations have not been adequate to handle the next tidal wave of passport applications which is expected to materialize ahead of the next phase’s implementation.

     “The State Department badly bungled the handling of passport requests when Congress required them for places like Mexico and Canada. The failed execution of this one program has now uncovered the fact there are broader problems system-wide that the State Department must fix,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said in a press release last week.

–EZ