U.S. – Passport Delays

The State Department’s global database for issuing travel documents has crashed, resulting in major delays for potentially millions of people around the world waiting for U.S. passports and visas. Unspecified glitches in the department’s Consular Consolidated Database have resulted in ‘significant performance issues, including outages’ in the processing of applications for passports, visas and reports of Americans born abroad since Saturday. The problem is worldwide and not specific to any particular country, citizenship document, or visa category. The ‘extensive backlog’ of applications has hampered efforts to get the system fully back on line.