Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Passport renewal at the US Embassy in Bangkok.

I am going to go ahead and quote an article from the New York Times, that is nytimes.com, the article is titled: Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems. I am citing this mostly so that people understand the background. This isn't just a Thailand thing. I have had a lot of correspondence from people who are trying to get their passports renewed and things are not moving as fast as they normally move. Quoting directly: "Consular appointments for US citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many Embassies plagued with COVID restrictions and staff reductions remain all but closed." Quoting further: "American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization for US 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." Quoting further: "In Mexico, which is believed  to have more American expats than any other country, a recent search on the appointment database for the US Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services even with emergency circumstances. (appointments from July onward have not yet been released)." I will get into that in a minute. Quoting further: "As of early April, 75% of US Consulates abroad remained at least partially closed." That is rather telling. Getting into July, so “July onward had not yet been released”, they don't usually book appointments past 2 months out for much of anything. We see this in the Visa section; we see it when dealing with ACS, that there is a time lag if you will with respect to when they set appointments. So I think part of the reason for this is they don't want a bunch of people, 1) gobbling up all the appointments. There is kind of a weird, and they go into it in this article. I urge those watching this video, check out this article: Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems, again nytimes.com. They talk in there about this almost Black Market of people who have gone in and they snatch up all the appointments and then resell them onto a secondary market. The State Department has been clear that they don't take very kindly to that and personally I don't think it is as big a problem as maybe it is made out to be in this article. 

The fact is there are fewer appointments or there seem to be and there is still the same number of people that need to do the same number of things but we have just got this situation where there are less staff or they are not open at all and we just have to deal with it. Now again, I hesitate to say it is nobody's fault. Actually no, I take that back. Nobody is really trying to make this any worse than it is. It is just they have their protocols to deal with and then on top of it, in some in some jurisdictions as was the case in the Embassy here at the beginning of the year and in the last year and they were really even in a sense they were kind of voluntarily going by the nationwide rules and they just were closed because the rest of the country was closed. So you are looking at a backlog from the past year of people that needed to do things and then on top of it, the system is not running optimally so we are ending up with these circumstances. 

I totally understand people's frustrations but if you are looking to get a passport, especially those watching this video who don't need it yet but maybe it is going to expire in a year, it is probably not a bad idea to start planning for that now because you want to get your passport renewed before the 6 month mark because if it has got less than 6 months validity it can be real problem with respect to flying. So those folks who have a year left on their passport, it might be a good idea sooner rather than later to start making arrangements to get it renewed.