Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles but moved to Israel with his family when he was 9 years old. In July 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles in June 2021 to visit his grandparents, knowing that he would have almost a full year to get his long-expired American passport renew.
Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the US embassy in Jerusalem to do just that.
Approximately 9 million US citizens are currently living overseas, and by the time the light finally appears at the end of the pandemic tunnel, immigration lawyers estimate that more than 100,000 will be unable to obtain travel documents to return to the US.
Although the State Department recorded a massive backlog of passport applications in the first few months of the pandemic, many overseas consulates and embassies plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and downsizing remain closed to all but emergency services. The trip is starting again, but for American expats who had a baby overseas in the past year or whose passport expired during the pandemic, elusive dates for documents are keeping them on the floor.
“It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a huge, complex onion of a problem, and the downsizing of consular posts as a result of Covid has really thrown the State Department in a loop.”
Michael Wildes, managing partner of the immigration law firm Wildes & Weinberg, PC, estimates that the number of Americans stranded overseas is in the hundreds of thousands.
“Our offices have been flooded,” he said. “We received at least 1,200 calls a week, around 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more resilient than people think, and that’s not how a 21st century society should work. “
Balloon jams, endless delays
In Israel alone, the US embassy has a passport jam of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post. American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group for U.S. expats, sent an official request to the State Department in October 2020 to prioritize Americans’ access to consular services abroad. “But people are still experiencing delays,” said the organization’s executive director, Marylouise Serrato.
In Mexico, which is believed to have more American expats than any other country, a recent search of the appointments database of the US Embassy in Mexico City found that there are no appointments available for passport services even in emergencies (appointments from July not yet) has been published).
At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both personal passport renewal and obtaining an official record of a child’s eligibility for U.S. citizenship known as a consular birth report overseas declined than Britain did last Autumn was blocked again. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said the two of them had run out of appointments since November. “You can imagine that if you are a US citizen and have had a baby in the past six months it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said.
In early April, 75 percent of US consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not publish numbers on how many Americans around the world are waiting for deadlines, but the size of the backlog for interviews with approved U.S. immigrant visas, which are also processed by the State Department and are experiencing the same slowdown. gives an impression of the challenge. As of January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States. By February 2021, the backlog had risen to 473,000.
Malicious mix of politics and pandemic
State Department officials would not provide precise details of waiting times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays in applying for non-emergency passport or citizenship services and that hours of operation between Messages each vary significantly when faced with various Covid-19 restrictions.
In the United States, adult US citizens can renew an expired passport through the mail. This currently takes 10 to 12 weeks, according to US State Department officials. In many overseas countries, citizens must apply to a US embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in countries where U.S. passport extensions are available through the mail, travel documents must still be requested in person for minors or those whose passports have expired before the age of 18.
The situation, said immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was caused by a vicious mix of politics and pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the remaining Covid-19 restrictions had a serious impact on the timelines and procedures for processing visas and passports by the State Department like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said.
Dates for sale
Mr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, logged into the US embassy website at 10 a.m. every day for months. He heard on Facebook that appointments were posted every day to try and get one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his apartment in Jerusalem to the US embassy to ask the guards if they knew of openings and sent several emails to consular officers. Everyone told him he just had to wait. Finally, when the deadline for his trip expired, he heard from a third-party agent in Israel who had promised to book him an appointment for $ 450 within weeks.
The State Department bans such practices, but the problem of pirates selling access to U.S. embassies is pervasive enough that the Consular Office issued a notice to registered passport couriers on Jan. 14 informing them of the consequences for Pay-to-play offers were warned for dates. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport and visa expediting service, said many of them are so small that they can hardly be tracked.
“Since there is an online appointment system, anyone can register, store these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the US, they can sell for $ 200 or $ 250, but outside of the country they can be a lot more.”
Mr. Shemesh got the agent’s phone number and transferred the money. One day he had a confirmed appointment.
“I tried to get an appointment for eight months and it really was a bummer because I have to work hard for my money. I paid more to renew my passport than I paid for the ticket to Los Angeles. It felt like blackmail. “
Desperate Americans in other countries have considered paying for other services as well.
Conner Gorry, 51, an American journalist living in Cuba, spent several hectic weeks renewing her expiring passport earlier this year. The US embassy in Havana is closed to everyone except emergency services. She tried to make an appointment for six weeks but got no response. Ms. Gorry became so stressed out that she developed gastritis, and at one point she considered spending more than $ 13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she could renew her passport in the mail.
She eventually found a flight from Havana and flew to the US with a week left in her passport. She is not sure when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her angry.
“The Covid thing is one thing. But the US has citizens all over the world and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and look after us? “
Documents for American citizens in the United States are also stuck in arrears. When Dayna and Brian Lee, Tony Award-winning producers of Angels in America, had twin babies in early April, the bureaucratic headache began before they took their newborn daughters from the hospital to their New York City home. where they have been living for several years.
The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters Emmy and Ella are eligible for dual US and Canadian citizenship, but are currently without a passport from either country. The infants must first have American passports so that their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls can also obtain their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at a U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive from New York City. In the end, they turned to an immigration lawyer for help.
“It’s so inexplicably stressful mixed with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives before you,” said Mr. Lee. “But we made the decision that hell or the floods would come. We’ll be with our families this summer.”
Elizabeth Goss, a Boston-based immigration attorney, expects delays and planned headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last for another year.
“It’s like a cruise ship that needs to be readjusted,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”
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