Conversation

Jonathan Corbet

So after something like eight hours spent on hold over the last couple of weeks, I'm now informed that there is no hope of getting my renewed passport in time for next week's trip. Three months and the full "expedited processing" fee, it seems, were not enough. So now I get to tear down all of my plans, pay all of those cancellation fees, and remain stuck inside a country that I am rather frustrated with at the moment.

Hopefully something will happen in time for me to get to LSFMM next month.
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@geert Somehow I don't see getting a NEXUS card from scratch more quickly than a renewed passport, so that's not going to help me, alas.
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@brauner Certainly nothing like that as far as I've ever heard. The only option the State department people had to offer was "don't travel".
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@brauner @corbet Is a passport card quicker than a passport?

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@rostedt @brauner I doubt it and, in any case, a passport card wouldn't do me any good.
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@matttbe @geert Passport renewal has never been breathtakingly fast here, but it used to be tolerable and relatively deterministic. If you search you'll see there's a lot of people complaining at the moment...lots of excuses about post-pandemic travel surges and such...

Of course, the fact that one of our political parties is against the concept of government, calls government services a waste of money, and refuses to fund said services might just play into this too. Maybe.
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@corbet would be great to see you at LSF/MM!
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