Feds: Staff added to Long Island, NYC passport office

The office that handles urgent passport applications for New York City and Long Island — described as “backlogged” in a July letter from six area House members, including three from Long Island — has added staff to cut wait times, according to the State Department.

Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Legislative Affairs Naz Durakoglu wrote in an Aug. 8 letter to Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) that the New York Passport Agency had added seven “support associates” to its eight-member customer support team to “bolster the agency’s ability to quickly facilitate urgent travel.” One of the existing staffers is on extended leave, Durakoglu wrote.

About 2.6 million passport applications were awaiting processing on July 15, Durakoglu wrote, a 75% increase from that point in fiscal year 2022. Staffing issues and surging demand have combined to increase wait times for all passport-processing offices nationally this year that serve customers with international travel within 14 days. 

The State Department, which runs the New York Passport Agency, responded to the national crunch by authorizing overtime and hiring more workers. But Garbarino and other representatives said in a July 13 letter to State Department officials that delays at the New York agency had jeopardized travel plans for their constituents. The delay had gotten so bad, according to the letter, representatives sometimes made appointments for constituents at other agencies as far away as Buffalo and San Diego. 

In an email this week, Garbarino described the backlog as “totally unacceptable” but remained “encouraged by the State Department’s response to my requests to address the problem.” 

It is common for senators and House members to help constituents file and sometimes expedite passport applications. Kristen Cianci, a spokeswoman for Garbarino, said that the New York agency, which she added had stopped answering calls from her office for a three-week period earlier this year, was once again cooperating to resolve cases.

Vanessa Smith, a spokeswoman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, declined to comment, but in her letter, Durakoglu said that “on average,” the department was issuing passports within 10 to 13 weeks for routine service and seven to nine weeks for expedited service.

On Tuesday afternoon, two lines outside the New York Passport Agency’s Manhattan office on Hudson Street had about 15 people total. Several people waiting in line said their experience had been almost friction-free.

James Young, a real estate professional from Manhattan bound for Greece, said he “immediately got through” to the State Department hotline to make an appointment for a passport renewal, and that staff inside the agency were “courteous and calm.”

Serina Poongavanum, a medical technologist from Ozone Park, Queens said she’d gone through the application process that morning and was back to retrieve her passport for a trip to Guyana. Thus far, the process had been “easy,” she said, but “we’ll see when we go in.”