![]() Facebook and WhatsApp groups bristled with reports of bewilderment and fury. Passport applicants lit up social media groups, toll-free numbers and lawmakers’ phone lines with questions, appeals for advice and cries for help. “How about they just process my passports?” “I can’t afford four more plane tickets anywhere in the United States to get a passport when I applied in plenty of time,” she said. She calls the toll-free number every day, holds for as much as 90 minutes to be told - at best - that she might be able to get a required appointment at passport offices in other states. “My nerves are shot, because I may not be able to get to him,” she said. Failure to obtain the family’s passports would mean losing $4,000, she said, as well as the chance to meet one of her sons in Italy after a study-abroad semester. ![]() “We’ll still be okay,” she thought.Īt T-minus two weeks to travel, this was her assessment: “I can’t sleep.” This after months of calling, holding, pressing refresh on a website, trying her member of Congress - and stressing as the departure date loomed. Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. “Plenty of time,” Collier recalled thinking. They’d have their passports a month before they needed them. The clerk, she said, estimated wait times at eight to 11 weeks. It was early March when Dallas-area florist Ginger Collier applied for four passports ahead of a family vacation at the end of June. ![]()
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