[ad_1]
The World Health Organization declared on May 5, 2023 that the Covid-19 outbreak is not a public health emergency. Although the virus is still causing hospitalizations and deaths, many travelers who were reluctant to travel abroad because of the pandemic now feel more free to travel internationally again.
It will be much easier to work this summer if you have a valid passport. The wait to find one is increasing. The State Department says it can take up to 13 weeks to process passport applications, and up to nine weeks for expedited services that require a surcharge. It is getting about 500,000 passport applications a week, at least 30% more than last year, Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken said in March. Processing delays worsened in 2021 and 2022.
I am among the many Americans who have had to cancel or delay trips due to long wait times. I was hoping to fly to London for a week off between economics courses. Unfortunately renewing my passport took so long I couldn’t go.
The government has said that staffing problems are contributing to the delay. As an economist who studies the everyday experiences of consumers, I wondered if there was more to the story since international travel is big business. US residents spent nearly $17 billion on travel abroad in the month of March 2023.
Origin of passport
Passports are long gone. Four hundred years ago, during the reign of King Louis XIV of France, they became widespread. The king issued letters to those with royal connections asking foreign officials to allow the traveler to “pass the port” – French for pass – the port or border of another country.
You can find a similar statement on the front of every US passport, which reads: “Requesting the passage of the citizen/citizen of the United States named herein without delay or obstruction.”
One reason for the passport bottleneck in the United States is the long-term increase in demand for those official blue booklets. In the year In 1989, there were three valid passports for every 100 people in this country. Today, there are more than 45 passports for every 100 Americans. More recently, many Americans who avoided international travel during the pandemic and let their passports expire are eager to travel again.
Changes after 2000
The US population has increased by about 1 percent each year over the past three decades. During the same period, the number of people holding legal passports jumped by an average of 10% per year, 10 times faster than population growth.
Part of the growing demand for passports followed a policy shift in the early 2000s. Before that, US citizens did not need a passport to travel to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. A driver’s license or an official document such as a birth certificate was the acceptable document for visiting countries that share a common border with the US in 2009, but a passport was required to visit nearby countries by air, land or sea.
But the new rules are not fully considered for the increase in passport issuance. In the year In 2010, nearly 100 million people had a valid US passport. Today they are over 150 million.
Lost, stolen and damaged passports
Another reason for the expansion of passports is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making more requests than ever for reissued passports to replace lost and stolen documents.
One concern while traveling is keeping your passport safe. No one has ever stolen my passport, but I spilled food on it while climbing a mountain, washed it away in a downpour, and crushed it in my suitcase on the world’s longest flight.
If your passport is lost, destroyed, or stolen, you must file a DS-64 form with the State Department. Filling out this form will prevent a thief from using your passport. The information is not only stored in the US, but sent to Interpol’s stolen/lost travel document database, which prevents international travel by someone impersonating you when traveling with your stolen passport.
The government periodically releases a number of DS-64 forms. In 2005, a little over 100,000 were logged. That’s a five-fold increase from the more than 500,000 people who reported losing their passports in 2021.
Who gets a passport?
Where do passport applications come from?
Not surprisingly, states with more people tend to have more passports. For example, Californians will receive the highest number of passports in 2022, about 2.7 million.
But some states have more roaming than others. After adjusting for population, the top two sources of international travel over the past few years have been the top income states of New Jersey and Massachusetts. About 1 in 17 residents in those areas apply for a passport each year.
The states whose residents are least likely to apply for a passport are the low-income states of Mississippi and West Virginia. In those areas, on average, only about 1 in 65 residents applied each year.
What can be done?
One of the reasons passport processing times are so long is that many people are taking trips that have been canceled in the spring of 2020. What can be done?
I suggest two things.
First, the Caribbean is one of America’s most popular tourist destinations. US travelers can visit the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico without a passport as they are US territories. I believe that expanding this access to as few Caribbean countries as possible prior to the 2009 policy change would increase tourism and reduce the need for passports.
Second, citizens with current passports should be able to use them while awaiting renewal. Now old passports must be submitted with renewal forms, which precludes international travel. The State Department doesn’t really want old documents. It recently experimented with allowing people to renew passports online without consulting their current passport book.
Once a new passport is issued, the old one becomes invalid. This can cause problems for people traveling abroad when their passports are renewed. There is a simple solution to this. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the State Department allowed US citizens abroad to enter their country when their passports expired.
Extending this policy means people can continue to travel regardless of how long it takes them to renew their passports.
This article is reprinted from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academics. If you find it interesting, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Written by Jay L. Zagorski, Boston University.
Read more:
Jay L. Zagorski does not work for, consult with, own stock in, or receive financial support from any company or organization covered by this article, and has disclosed no relevant relationships beyond his academic appointment.
[ad_2]
Source link
