What do you think? When do you think we will see the nextgen us passport?

Given various supply chain disruptions in the world are hitting the passport world too, I take it that now is a bad time to push forward on additional swapping and other changes to get in place additional production capacity for the “more secure” passport version. Not that the related inconvenience will necessarily stop an expensive transition at about as bad a time as any from proceeding in a way that makes collateral damage of Americans’ international travel plans.

The public should hope that the government doesn’t try to do all the costing metrics again this year — that is unless wanting to welcome an application price hike trajectory that would be even uglier than it was already looking pre-pandemic.

So you think it will roll out this year?

I think the sensible thing is that they should put a halt this year on even trying to expand the proportion of newly issued passports in the “more secure” version.

Steamrolling over common sense — and ignoring financial sense — is already part and parcel of this transition, so no bets are off.

https://travel.state.gov/content/tra...assports.html/
Looks like DoS is attributing the extended passport processing times to mail delays and not necessarily increased actual times for processing. An expedited request is still taking up to 6 weeks, as has been the case for a while. So I think we could still reasonably get an announcement between September 2021 and February 2022. What say the group?

That's DoS BS. IMO, USPS mail processing has been fine. Had various first class letters travel from one coast to the other in under a week.

My bet is that mail is almost certainly still a contributing and exacerbating factor to the delays, even as it’s not the only factor driving up the delays. The quoted words from State indicate and play up mail as a factor in the turnaround times on applications, but they also don’t exclude what else is going on.

actually they explicitly do. The processing times are the same as December, January when they announced they were speeding up operations (expedited 6 weeks; 12 weeks for routine). I got one in my household done in January (expedited) and so I recall the processing times. And it is the same now. They are putting ALL of the sway on USPS

It doesn’t read to me as explicitly or implicitly doing so; but it sounds like something we may have to agree to disagree about perhaps in much the same way as with the “need” for this “more secure” version of US passports.

If they are saying the processing times are the same and mail is doubling the time I’m not sure how to read it any other way…

they have cheekily switched and conflated terms (submitted, received) so as to make it appear it is USPS' fault when in fact it is their own actual processing. The first sentence says the processing clock begins when the application is "received - not the day you mail it" - which technically means when it is entered into their system. But the next sentence says it takes 18 weeks from the date the application is "submitted." But to State, submitted means the date they enter it into the system (and status then indicates "received"); State knows lay people will think "submitted" means the day the application was put in the mails since they specified "received" does not mean the day it was put in the mails.

From my personal experience (documented above): it took USPS only 3 days to deliver my two applications from DC to the filthadelphia processing center using regular mail (USPS has records of this). It then took State many weeks to open and enter the applications into the system. Once approved, without requesting expedited delivery, it took only days for USPS to deliver the new passbooks and cards. So this business of "allow 6 weeks of mailing time on the front and back end" is patently and demonstrably horse-hockey.

And my regular poker buddies who work for State and have reason to know, confirm this. As does almost everyone here on this thread. So, who ya gonna believe, State or your own eyes?

Well if this is true, and your argument is reasonable, then we may be looking at yet another major delay to the rollout of the nextgen passport platform to the public. Extreme incompetence since other countries (with less resources) have been far more expeditious about updates. Perhaps they will make an announcement on tourist passports sometime next year (2022)?

On June 30th, I reached out to my Senator on my son’s application applied at post office 13 weeks ago. 2 hours after my call with the congressional aide, application was approved. Shipped out Priority Mail that same day from Arkansas and delivered today (less than 48 hours transit time). 13 weeks ago I had various letters, periodicals, checks all delivered by USPS without delay.

I don’t see USPS being the problem here.

Moderator's Note - Topic Drift
 

Folks,

The topic of this thread is the new more secure version of the US passport, not processing times of passport renewals and new passport applications. There is a thread about the latter subject in the USA forum.

While some natural deviation from the subject of the thread is fine, please keep the focus of the discussion on the upcoming more secure US passport.

Future posts which have nothing to do with the next generation of the US passport will be summarily deleted without further notice.

Thank you for understanding,

TWA884
Travel Safety/Security co-moderator

DoS is not in good functional shape right now. Borderline chaotic. Forget the next generation passport for this year. Definitely isn’t happening at the rate DoS is becoming dysfunctional