House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, and Rep. Michael Lawler, New York Republican, wrote to Rena Bitter, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Passport applications have been backed up for months, and officials blame staff shortages related to the pandemic along with an increase in applications. The department receives up to 500,000 applications a week. “In best-case scenario, brokers are charging individuals for a service that can be facilitated by the National Passport Information Center,” they wrote. “In the worst-case scenario, brokers are reportedly promising appointment bookings that are, in actuality, fake. Thus robbing individuals of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.”
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