Gratis Mind

If your new born’s american passport is delayed, this is probably why.

While AP reports from July 23 state that Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty, who is in charge of passports for U.S. citizens, has accepted “full blame” for the delays in US citizens getting their passports, it does little to ease the situation. The delays are due almost exclusively to the The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), mandated by Congress in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. WHTI requirements for air travel took effect on January 23, 2007. Requiring citizens to now need passports to travel to places like Mexico and the addition of RFID chips to US passports in so-called efforts to thwart terrorists — along with budget problems, and a passport redesign — has turned a routine six-week application process into a Kafka-esque nightmare for hundreds of thousands of citizens. And, a boon for price-gouging passport fulfillment sites.