Govt pledges to reduce passport waiting time

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government promised on Tuesday to cut the waiting time for passports, as senators complained their phone lines were jammed by furious citizens caught up in a backlog of some 3 million applications.

With some U.S. citizens waiting up to three months now to receive their passports -- double the normal time span -- Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty pledged an improvement.

"By the end of September, we will get to eight weeks, and by the end of the year, back to six weeks" processing time, Harty told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee.

The panel had summoned Harty, who is in charge of consular affairs, to Capitol Hill to explain steps the government was taking to cope with a surge in passport applications.

The increase was caused by new rules this year requiring passports for U.S. citizens flying to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean. Although the State Department announced earlier this month that the rules would be temporarily relaxed, this has only partly alleviated the problem.

Because many Americans rarely travel abroad, often they do not apply for passports until they have plans to do so -- such as for a honeymoon, or in an emergency involving distant relatives. Senators said they were inundated with complaints from people desperate for help with getting their passports.

"You have a mess ... I can tell you the (Senate) offices are absolutely overwhelmed," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who chaired the hearing.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter said his staffers could not get through to each other on their own telephone lines because of the deluge of calls.

Harty acknowledged officials had failed to predict how many Americans would apply for a passport immediately once the new rules affecting air travelers -- aimed at increasing border security in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks -- took effect in January.

Some 5.4 million passport applications were filed in just a few months, and extraordinary measures have been taken to try to cope with them, she said.

But despite the difficulties, she thought the new rules were a good thing, noting that in the past border guards had to scrutinize thousands of different identification documents presented by Americans returning from countries nearby.

Before the new rules, she could have gone abroad and "on the strength of my Staten Island accent and my gold gym card talk my way back into America," Harty said.

Congress is contemplating a longer phase-in for similar passport rules for people driving or taking a boat back to the United States. The House of Representatives last week approved a postponement until mid-2009, and the proposed delay is pending in the Senate.