The U.S. Department of State announced the opening of more passport agencies in the country.
The offices will be in Salt Lake City, UT; Kansas City, MO; Orlando, FL; Charlotte, NC; San Antonio, TX; and Cincinnati, OH. Mr. Blinken said in the statement that they reflect a “commitment to provide prompt customer services to more Americans closer to where they live.”
The statement did not say when the facilities would be operational.
Back in 1990, only 5 percent of Americans had a passport, a figure that has now grown to 48 percent, he noted. In fiscal year 2023, the department issued over 24 million passport books and cards, “more than ever before.”
The six new facilities will expand the department’s passport network to 35 passport agencies and centers. This is in addition to the more than 7,400 public passport acceptance facilities across the nation.
The new agencies will provide services to people with urgent travel needs. Individuals who do not require such services are advised to apply at any of the thousands of passport acceptance facilities, which include post offices and local government centers.
Mr. Blinken pointed out that over 99 percent of Americans live within 25 miles of an acceptance center.
The Secretary of State said that the department is processing passports at pre-pandemic levels even though it is issuing more passports than before.
In a June 19 X video post by the State Department, Mr. Blinken advised Americans to check their passport expiry dates and get a new one if the expiration date is close.
“Check out travel.state.gov for the latest information and enroll in our STEP program so that you know anything that’s going on that you need to know about the country that you’re going to. We want Americans to be able to travel the world and to do so safely,” he said.
Resolving Processing Delays
The State Department’s decision to expand passport agencies comes after the agency faced delays in processing passports last year as Americans resumed traveling in large numbers following the COVID-19 pandemic.Last August, the department said, it was taking 10 to 13 weeks for routine processing. Expedited processing, which adds an additional cost of $60 on top of the standard fee of $130, took about seven to nine weeks.
In December 2023, the agency announced that processing times had returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, with routine processing taking six to eight weeks.
This past week, the agency announced a beta trial of an online passport renewal system.
“Utah is experiencing rapid population growth as it becomes a center for global commerce and tourism—as well as home base to thousands of Latter-day Saints who embark on worldwide religious missions each year,” he said.
“A passport agency in Salt Lake now means that Utahns will not have to travel such long distances to obtain in-person consular services. I could not be more thrilled with today’s announcement.”
The bill seeks to expand the online passport renewal system to make it available to first-time adult applications.
It proposes accelerating the renewal process using software in passport adjudication. The proposal also asks for more congressional oversight over the State Department’s modernization efforts.
“The collapse of the passport system represents a signature failure that upended and inconvenienced tens of millions of Americans who have the right to expect far more of their government,” he said.
“This transformative approach will not only address many of the problems that led to the backlog but also deliver modernizations that are overdue and will set the system right for decades to come.”
