消消气，别骂了，养足精神接着抢号吧。 海外美国人护照过期了要办新护照也遇到长时间办不了的问题，抢不到号的问题，高价找第三方买号的问题。看看这篇纽约时报今年5/6的长篇报道，全文如下： https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/travel/covid-travel.html Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems Consular appointments for U.S. citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many embassies, plagued by Covid restrictions and staff reductions, remain all but closed. By Debra Kamin Published May 6, 2021 Updated May 17, 2021 Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles, but he moved to Israel with his family at age 9. In July 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles to visit his grandparents in June 2021, knowing that he would have nearly an entire year to renew his American passport, which had long since expired. Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to do just that. About 9 million U.S. citizens currently live abroad, and as the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel finally appears, immigration lawyers estimate more than 100,000 can’t get travel documents to return to the United States. Despite the State Department making headway on a massive backlog of passport applications in the early months of the pandemic, many consulates and embassies abroad, plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and staffing reductions, remain closed for all but emergency services. Travel is restarting, but for American expats who had a baby abroad in the past year or saw their passport expire during the pandemic, elusive appointments for documents are keeping them grounded. “It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a giant, multilayered onion of a problem and the reduction of staff as a result of Covid at the consular posts has really thrown the State Department for a loop.” Michael Wildes, the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., which specializes in immigration law, estimates that the number of stranded Americans abroad is in the hundreds of thousands. “Our offices have been inundated,” he said. “We’ve been getting at least 1,200 calls a week on this, which is about 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more robust than people realize, and this isn’t how a 21st-century society should work.” Ballooning backlog, endless delays In Israel alone, the U.S. Embassy has a passport backlog of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post.American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization 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 on the appointment database for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services, even with emergency circumstances (appointments from July onward have not yet been released). At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both in-person passport renewals and obtaining an official record of a child’s claim to U.S. citizenship, known as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, plummeted when Britain went back into lockdown last fall. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said that since November, appointments have been nonexistent for both. “You can imagine that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’ve had a baby in the past six months, it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said. And as of early April, 75 percent of U.S. consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not release numbers on how many Americans are awaiting passport appointments around the world, but the size of the backlog for interviews for approved U.S. immigration visas — which are also handled by the State Department and have been affected by the same slowdown — gives a sense of the challenge. In January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States; as of February 2021, the backlog had ballooned to 473,000. Vicious mix of politics and the pandemic State Department officials would not offer specifics on wait times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays when applying for nonemergency passport or citizenship services, and that operating hours vary significantly between embassies, as each is facing different Covid-19 restrictions. Stateside, adult U.S. citizens can renew an expired passport by mail, a process which is currently taking 10 to 12 weeks, according to State Department officials. But in many countries abroad, citizens must apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in the countries where U.S. passport renewals are available by mail, travel documents for minors or for those whose passports expired before the age of 18 still need to be requested in person. The situation, said the immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was created by a vicious mix of politics and the pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the Covid-19 restrictions still in place seriously impacted the visa and passport-processing time frames and procedures by the Department of State like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said. Appointments for sale Mr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, spent months logging onto the U.S. Embassy’s website daily at 10 a.m., which he heard on Facebook was the moment that appointments were released each day, to try to grab one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his Jerusalem apartment to the U.S. Embassy to ask the guards if they knew of any openings, and he sent multiple emails to consular officials. Everyone told him he simply needed to wait. Finally, with the deadline for his trip looming, he heard about a third-party broker in Israel who promised he could book him an appointment within weeks in exchange for $450. The State Department prohibits such practices, but the issue of bootleggers selling access to U.S. embassies is widespread enough that on Jan. 14, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a notice to registered passport courier companies warning them of consequences for pay-to-play offerings for appointments. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport-and-visa-expediting service, said that many of them are so small that they’re nearly impossible to track. “Since there is an online appointment system, anybody can log on, stockpile these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the United States, they can be sold for $200 or $250, but out of the country they can charge much more.” Mr. Shemesh got the broker’s phone number and transferred the money, and in one day, he had a confirmed appointment. “I tried for eight months to get an appointment, and it was really a bummer because my money is something I have to work hard for. I paid more to renew my passport than I did on 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 who lives in Cuba, spent several frantic weeks trying to renew her expiring passport earlier this year. The U.S. Embassy in Havana is closed for all but emergency services. For six weeks, she tried to book an appointment, and received no response. Ms. Gorry grew so stressed that she developed gastritis, and at one point, she contemplated spending more than $13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she would be able to renew her passport by mail. She eventually found a flight out of Havana, and flew to the U.S. with one week left on her passport. She is unsure of when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her furious. “The Covid thing is one thing. But the U.S. has citizens all over the world, and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and attend to us?” Documents for American citizens within the United States are also getting stuck in the backlog. When Dayna and Brian Lee, who are Tony Award-winning producers of “Angels in America,” had twin baby girls in early April, the bureaucratic headaches started before they even brought their newborn daughters from the hospital to their home in New York City, where they have lived for several years. The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters, Emmy and Ella, are eligible for dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship but are currently without passports from either country. The infants must have American passports first so their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls will be able to also receive their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at any U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive of New York City. They ended up turning to an immigration lawyer for help. “It’s so inexplicably stressful, mixed up with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives in front of you,” Mr. Lee said. “But we’ve made the decision that come hell or high water, we will be with our families this summer.” Elizabeth Goss, an immigration attorney based in Boston, said she expects delays and scheduling headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last another year. “It’s like a cruise ship that needs to readjust,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”
消消气，别骂了，养足精神接着抢号吧。 海外美国人护照过期了要办新护照也遇到长时间办不了的问题，抢不到号的问题，高价找第三方买号的问题。看看这篇纽约时报今年5/6的长篇报道，全文如下： https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/travel/covid-travel.html Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems Consular appointments for U.S. citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many embassies, plagued by Covid restrictions and staff reductions, remain all but closed. By Debra Kamin Published May 6, 2021 Updated May 17, 2021 Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles, but he moved to Israel with his family at age 9. In July 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles to visit his grandparents in June 2021, knowing that he would have nearly an entire year to renew his American passport, which had long since expired. Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to do just that. About 9 million U.S. citizens currently live abroad, and as the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel finally appears, immigration lawyers estimate more than 100,000 can’t get travel documents to return to the United States. Despite the State Department making headway on a massive backlog of passport applications in the early months of the pandemic, many consulates and embassies abroad, plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and staffing reductions, remain closed for all but emergency services. Travel is restarting, but for American expats who had a baby abroad in the past year or saw their passport expire during the pandemic, elusive appointments for documents are keeping them grounded. “It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a giant, multilayered onion of a problem and the reduction of staff as a result of Covid at the consular posts has really thrown the State Department for a loop.” Michael Wildes, the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., which specializes in immigration law, estimates that the number of stranded Americans abroad is in the hundreds of thousands. “Our offices have been inundated,” he said. “We’ve been getting at least 1,200 calls a week on this, which is about 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more robust than people realize, and this isn’t how a 21st-century society should work.” Ballooning backlog, endless delays In Israel alone, the U.S. Embassy has a passport backlog of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post.American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization 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 on the appointment database for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services, even with emergency circumstances (appointments from July onward have not yet been released). At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both in-person passport renewals and obtaining an official record of a child’s claim to U.S. citizenship, known as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, plummeted when Britain went back into lockdown last fall. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said that since November, appointments have been nonexistent for both. “You can imagine that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’ve had a baby in the past six months, it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said. And as of early April, 75 percent of U.S. consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not release numbers on how many Americans are awaiting passport appointments around the world, but the size of the backlog for interviews for approved U.S. immigration visas — which are also handled by the State Department and have been affected by the same slowdown — gives a sense of the challenge. In January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States; as of February 2021, the backlog had ballooned to 473,000. Vicious mix of politics and the pandemic State Department officials would not offer specifics on wait times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays when applying for nonemergency passport or citizenship services, and that operating hours vary significantly between embassies, as each is facing different Covid-19 restrictions. Stateside, adult U.S. citizens can renew an expired passport by mail, a process which is currently taking 10 to 12 weeks, according to State Department officials. But in many countries abroad, citizens must apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in the countries where U.S. passport renewals are available by mail, travel documents for minors or for those whose passports expired before the age of 18 still need to be requested in person. The situation, said the immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was created by a vicious mix of politics and the pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the Covid-19 restrictions still in place seriously impacted the visa and passport-processing time frames and procedures by the Department of State like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said. Appointments for sale Mr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, spent months logging onto the U.S. Embassy’s website daily at 10 a.m., which he heard on Facebook was the moment that appointments were released each day, to try to grab one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his Jerusalem apartment to the U.S. Embassy to ask the guards if they knew of any openings, and he sent multiple emails to consular officials. Everyone told him he simply needed to wait. Finally, with the deadline for his trip looming, he heard about a third-party broker in Israel who promised he could book him an appointment within weeks in exchange for $450. The State Department prohibits such practices, but the issue of bootleggers selling access to U.S. embassies is widespread enough that on Jan. 14, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a notice to registered passport courier companies warning them of consequences for pay-to-play offerings for appointments. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport-and-visa-expediting service, said that many of them are so small that they’re nearly impossible to track. “Since there is an online appointment system, anybody can log on, stockpile these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the United States, they can be sold for $200 or $250, but out of the country they can charge much more.” Mr. Shemesh got the broker’s phone number and transferred the money, and in one day, he had a confirmed appointment. “I tried for eight months to get an appointment, and it was really a bummer because my money is something I have to work hard for. I paid more to renew my passport than I did on 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 who lives in Cuba, spent several frantic weeks trying to renew her expiring passport earlier this year. The U.S. Embassy in Havana is closed for all but emergency services. For six weeks, she tried to book an appointment, and received no response. Ms. Gorry grew so stressed that she developed gastritis, and at one point, she contemplated spending more than $13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she would be able to renew her passport by mail. She eventually found a flight out of Havana, and flew to the U.S. with one week left on her passport. She is unsure of when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her furious. “The Covid thing is one thing. But the U.S. has citizens all over the world, and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and attend to us?” Documents for American citizens within the United States are also getting stuck in the backlog. When Dayna and Brian Lee, who are Tony Award-winning producers of “Angels in America,” had twin baby girls in early April, the bureaucratic headaches started before they even brought their newborn daughters from the hospital to their home in New York City, where they have lived for several years. The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters, Emmy and Ella, are eligible for dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship but are currently without passports from either country. The infants must have American passports first so their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls will be able to also receive their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at any U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive of New York City. They ended up turning to an immigration lawyer for help. “It’s so inexplicably stressful, mixed up with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives in front of you,” Mr. Lee said. “But we’ve made the decision that come hell or high water, we will be with our families this summer.” Elizabeth Goss, an immigration attorney based in Boston, said she expects delays and scheduling headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last another year. “It’s like a cruise ship that needs to readjust,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”
哎，楼主后知后觉啊。大妈我抢了一个月了，还没抢到，基本上秒gone。
不爽，大可不来更新，你的问题并不是大使馆的问题，they don’t care.
大使馆会告知你：请继续尝试抢号。
是后知后觉，平时不经常上来，今天被气的无语上来发牢骚，领事馆的人也逛华人网的话，请你们听听群众的呼声，当然屁民们的死活在某些人眼里就是个屁～
还提醒本周五还有一次，请提前准备好，无语了
中国人不配抱怨哈
国内也办不到。我同事父母想过来，护照过期换不到。父母都是一般退休的，不是当官的。
疫情不让进也就算了，不让出是什么逻辑？和疫情有关吗还是要关国门了
lz的胆子有点大。还有太后知后觉了。
出去了回来咋办？
请问公务员的工作是什么？出国的就是狗汉奸，那高管的子弟都往国外跑也是汉奸？还是间谍？
Book Your Appointment with Australian Consulate-General Los Angeles - Government - Los angeles - CA (setmore.com)
貌似这位是使馆工作人员，不然别人没人关心澳洲人在美国续护照是什么规矩。楼主可以和他联系看看，说些软话。
领事馆听群众呼声？ 哈。领馆前几天还发微博贴了个感谢信，为办护照的事儿洋洋自得呢。
楼主照着这个范文重写一遍，言辞一定要诚恳谦卑。领馆一高兴，开恩就给你办了。
领馆已经自己在微博上夸了一下自己， 你找猫画虎再来一遍， 领馆也是要脸的， 不能再贴微博求表扬吧， 应该抄送外交部， 在领导面前表扬一下领馆才有用。
以后领馆可以举办感谢信作文大赛。 获奖作文前三名奖励办护照名额一个。
抢了三个月没抢上的路过，放弃，等时间到了准备入籍，中国的大使馆这群混蛋，没时间在跟他们浪费了
为什么用“居然”呢？ 应该是“果然”。
没准会说：别人能抢到，为什么你抢不到，肯定是不够努力！
你努力点直接eb1a绿卡
重新投胎更快。
本质区别。 公民办本国护照是权利; 给外国人发签证是merit，他国不欠你的。
有个傻id还在这条下面怀疑领事自导自演 围脖这么说话简直是傻的不行
使馆的职责是为本国公民服务的。 不过土共字典里没有“公民”二字
谁能给个网址，我咋找不到这个网页呢……谢谢了
请你认清自己的位置，你只配做一颗韭菜。 别给zf找麻烦
我很好奇领事馆的那些工作人员闲着干嘛呢？看大家抢号心里很爽吗？
妈呀，这封信我看得要吐了……
真的假的？我爸的护照要过期了。正在想是在美国换还是回国换。如果回国不给换那就回不来了啊。
怎么会？你们那图书馆邮局都不办理么？我们这空空的appointment 网上预约还有reminderphonecall
16岁以上邮寄就可以无需预约，小孩只能apply in person
对啊我家小孩预约过 很顺利啊 很多空位 还有人预约不来 南方州 邮局大妈还抱怨他们noshow需要remindercalls 我们这人口密集的 倒是办完以后护照和卡寄来比较慢 花了蛮久 你这是哪里怎么会约不到？实在不行开远一点啦 总之还是办的了 比起旅行证抢号难度指数
真的假的？这年头，居然还要这个。
别的都同意，但是阻挡回国这个和护照不给办有关系么？护照过期了没法在美国正常生活才更容易回国吧？
不觉得是跟疫情再挂钩了。不管出于什么原因，感觉他们已经慢慢开始要搞海华了 - 从护照开始，不让你们办，让你们周周抢号，看你们还怎么得瑟 那种感觉。故意的！
护照过期可以在美国正常生活啊。 但如果没有护照就不能登机，最后就是既回不了国又变成非法居留
有很多限制条件，满足条件才可以网上办
怀疑你不在美国。没有护照在美可以正常生活 但回不了国啊
国内和海外都大幅消减新发换发护照数量。和五个一大幅消减航班一样，其实就是增大国际旅行难度的一种手段，达到减低境外输入的目的。
你早上邮局一开门就walk in去办，工作人员一般都会给你办，办一个很快的，他们预约中间有不少空的时间
别张嘴闭嘴就别人不在美国，我们可不是撕了护照来的。你们撕护照教派老师自己天天看国产电视剧看的五米六道的以为全世界跟你一样，没护照还能在美国正常生活？！自己啥途径来的美国真好意思炫耀啊？
除了回国飞机没问题，但在美国生活我们普通人类驾照什么都不能办，生活各方面签证也跟着过期根本很麻烦。
护照过期不可以上回国飞机，问过使馆人员了
不要把自己看得太重要，海华只是抽抽签，陆华根本不给办。你看是搞海华还是搞陆华？
对呀。除了回国没问题在美国其他都搞不了了，包括工作签证和驾照。所以很奇怪什么样的人物没护照了在美国各种都很方便啊
这位是领馆老师啊
“没有护照还能在美国正常生活“？？？？ 我们普通人拿中国护照的限制可比你们多啊，请考虑大家的诉求人性一点上上班开开工好嘛？谢谢啊
海外美国人护照过期了要办新护照也遇到长时间办不了的问题，抢不到号的问题，高价找第三方买号的问题。看看这篇纽约时报今年5/6的长篇报道，全文如下： https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/travel/covid-travel.html
Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems Consular appointments for U.S. citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many embassies, plagued by Covid restrictions and staff reductions, remain all but closed.
By Debra Kamin Published May 6, 2021 Updated May 17, 2021
Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles, but he moved to Israel with his family at age 9. In July 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles to visit his grandparents in June 2021, knowing that he would have nearly an entire year to renew his American passport, which had long since expired.
Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to do just that.
About 9 million U.S. citizens currently live abroad, and as the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel finally appears, immigration lawyers estimate more than 100,000 can’t get travel documents to return to the United States. Despite the State Department making headway on a massive backlog of passport applications in the early months of the pandemic, many consulates and embassies abroad, plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and staffing reductions, remain closed for all but emergency services. Travel is restarting, but for American expats who had a baby abroad in the past year or saw their passport expire during the pandemic, elusive appointments for documents are keeping them grounded.
“It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a giant, multilayered onion of a problem and the reduction of staff as a result of Covid at the consular posts has really thrown the State Department for a loop.”
Michael Wildes, the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., which specializes in immigration law, estimates that the number of stranded Americans abroad is in the hundreds of thousands.
“Our offices have been inundated,” he said. “We’ve been getting at least 1,200 calls a week on this, which is about 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more robust than people realize, and this isn’t how a 21st-century society should work.”
Ballooning backlog, endless delays In Israel alone, the U.S. Embassy has a passport backlog of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post. American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization 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 on the appointment database for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services, even with emergency circumstances (appointments from July onward have not yet been released).
At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both in-person passport renewals and obtaining an official record of a child’s claim to U.S. citizenship, known as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, plummeted when Britain went back into lockdown last fall. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said that since November, appointments have been nonexistent for both. “You can imagine that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’ve had a baby in the past six months, it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said. And as of early April, 75 percent of U.S. consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not release numbers on how many Americans are awaiting passport appointments around the world, but the size of the backlog for interviews for approved U.S. immigration visas — which are also handled by the State Department and have been affected by the same slowdown — gives a sense of the challenge. In January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States; as of February 2021, the backlog had ballooned to 473,000.
Vicious mix of politics and the pandemic State Department officials would not offer specifics on wait times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays when applying for nonemergency passport or citizenship services, and that operating hours vary significantly between embassies, as each is facing different Covid-19 restrictions. Stateside, adult U.S. citizens can renew an expired passport by mail, a process which is currently taking 10 to 12 weeks, according to State Department officials. But in many countries abroad, citizens must apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in the countries where U.S. passport renewals are available by mail, travel documents for minors or for those whose passports expired before the age of 18 still need to be requested in person.
The situation, said the immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was created by a vicious mix of politics and the pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the Covid-19 restrictions still in place seriously impacted the visa and passport-processing time frames and procedures by the Department of State like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said.
Appointments for sale Mr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, spent months logging onto the U.S. Embassy’s website daily at 10 a.m., which he heard on Facebook was the moment that appointments were released each day, to try to grab one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his Jerusalem apartment to the U.S. Embassy to ask the guards if they knew of any openings, and he sent multiple emails to consular officials. Everyone told him he simply needed to wait. Finally, with the deadline for his trip looming, he heard about a third-party broker in Israel who promised he could book him an appointment within weeks in exchange for $450.
The State Department prohibits such practices, but the issue of bootleggers selling access to U.S. embassies is widespread enough that on Jan. 14, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a notice to registered passport courier companies warning them of consequences for pay-to-play offerings for appointments. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport-and-visa-expediting service, said that many of them are so small that they’re nearly impossible to track. “Since there is an online appointment system, anybody can log on, stockpile these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the United States, they can be sold for $200 or $250, but out of the country they can charge much more.”
Mr. Shemesh got the broker’s phone number and transferred the money, and in one day, he had a confirmed appointment. “I tried for eight months to get an appointment, and it was really a bummer because my money is something I have to work hard for. I paid more to renew my passport than I did on 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 who lives in Cuba, spent several frantic weeks trying to renew her expiring passport earlier this year. The U.S. Embassy in Havana is closed for all but emergency services. For six weeks, she tried to book an appointment, and received no response. Ms. Gorry grew so stressed that she developed gastritis, and at one point, she contemplated spending more than $13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she would be able to renew her passport by mail.
She eventually found a flight out of Havana, and flew to the U.S. with one week left on her passport. She is unsure of when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her furious.
“The Covid thing is one thing. But the U.S. has citizens all over the world, and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and attend to us?”
Documents for American citizens within the United States are also getting stuck in the backlog. When Dayna and Brian Lee, who are Tony Award-winning producers of “Angels in America,” had twin baby girls in early April, the bureaucratic headaches started before they even brought their newborn daughters from the hospital to their home in New York City, where they have lived for several years. The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters, Emmy and Ella, are eligible for dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship but are currently without passports from either country. The infants must have American passports first so their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls will be able to also receive their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at any U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive of New York City. They ended up turning to an immigration lawyer for help. “It’s so inexplicably stressful, mixed up with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives in front of you,” Mr. Lee said. “But we’ve made the decision that come hell or high water, we will be with our families this summer.”
Elizabeth Goss, an immigration attorney based in Boston, said she expects delays and scheduling headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last another year. “It’s like a cruise ship that needs to readjust,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”
陆华哪只被护照这一条搞，搞你的办法多的是。都是屁民，只要还是红皮护照都得继续被搞有什么办法。
不听话的屁民都该被搞，早该管管了。
大胆， 居然敢骂领馆人员？以后还想不想回国了？
h1b是因为你在别人国家里， 别人想不想客人留下是人家的决定
抓住层主，真心请教，这个是必须亲自去办的对吗？现在可以跨区了吗？旅行证可以办吗？谢谢！！
不同领事馆以及大使馆要求差别很大，要看他们具体怎么写的。大使馆要求是别的领区就算抢到号材料到了会被直接退回。
哎呦原来领馆老师啊
羡慕羡慕，在美国生活我们韭菜中国人没护照可不方便了，没法“正常生活”，麻烦你们接点地气儿考虑下正常人类合法途径生活需求干点人事儿吧，谢谢了啊
要不然大家可都回国了啊！！！！
你发这也没用，大多数人还是觉得不管啥事，米国政府都做得比中国政府好，事实摆给他们也不会看的
刚换过驾照的人来说一下， 确实需要护照的
所以中国护照过期了是回不了中国的吗？我一直以为可以呢。。。
这个必须公平的说一句，和哪个国家没关系，去北加的dmv办事，经历过早上7，8点进去，下午3点出来，开到很远的郊区，15分钟不到就出来了。
上次换护照，在领事馆不超过半小时就搞定了。
去过洛杉矶的加拿大领事馆办加拿大签证，可能连15分钟都用不了。
30秒都用不上就全没了。。。
好像只是renew不涉及transfer会容易一些，但是需要有寄到手里让renew的单子才行
芝加哥领馆不用自己去，不知道可不可以跨区，我没办旅行证也不知道。你要去自己的领馆使馆网站上去看，当然是不是能看明白就是另一回事了。我给我家老人换护照，竟然要有老人名字的邮件，还得是账单之类的邮件来证明地址，我就想问谁家电费水费账单会在老人名字下面。另一个奇葩要求是要申请人拿着有当天日期的报纸拍照然后打印出来，以此来证明签名日期和照片是近照。我去，几百年没买过报纸了，跑到walgreen还到处问报纸在哪里，那一个礼拜我尽在折腾这事儿了。
好像辞藻不行，比如如沐春风之类的词语都没有，建议加上。
这两个能放在一起比吗？
之前就是邮件联系啊，现在改成要抢号了啊！6月出app是哪的消息？谁知道又能整出什么新猫腻千方百计阻拦中国公民办护照回国
正需要这些信息 谢谢
我今天点进去的时候它说让填验证码，可是我完全没找到验证码在哪里，还有在哪里输入验证码？我先用的是Chrome， 当时显示28/600, 然后换FireFox再进去就只看到600/600了。
谢谢！