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DEL.ICIO.USWaiting for a passport?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Are you waiting for a passport and getting anxious because your trip is closer and closer, but the passport is somewhere off in the distance? What I’m hearing from people is that they can’t even get an answer on how far off in the distance the passport is — nobody can tell them whether it will arrive tomorrow or weeks from now.
The State Department has admitted defeat, and announced that air travelers to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda won’t need a passport to re-enter the U.S. if they can show proof that they’ve applied for the passport (travelers by land or ship have until at least January 2008 to get a passport, but it’s likely that deadline might be pushed as well). People who haven’t applied for a passport by the time of their trip won’t be allowed to leave the country.
This is one of those, on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand issues. On the one hand, if you knew you were planning to travel outside the U.S. this year, and you knew there would be a crush of people wanting passports, why did you wait until January to apply for, or renew, your passport? On the other hand, wouldn’t you expect you’d be able to get a passport in a reasonable amount of time, say 4 to 6 weeks? Wouldn’t you expect that the government would also be expecting a crush of people to apply for passports and staff accordingly? Any business so ill-prepared would be out of business soon. What do you think?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Passports
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By JJ
June 8, 2007 2:35 PM | Link to this
I applied for a Passport on March 19, and received it on April 30. No problem.
By Amanda Miller
June 8, 2007 3:53 PM | Link to this
Hi JJ
I’m shocked it came through so fast; folks I’ve heard from are waiting and waiting. Did you do an expedited passport? I’ve heard even those are taking a lot longer.
Amanda