By MEGAN CHRISTOFFERSO
@by:By MEGAN CHRISTOFFERSON
@by2:Assistant City Editor
@textWhen some 30,000 Utah workers on federal furlough return to work, they will face piles of backlogged paperwork and long lines of people anxious for their services.
Since the federal shutdown began Dec. 15, passports have become a scarce commodity in the United States. The passport office is considered a non-essential government agency, and passport applications have not been processed since the shutdown began.
According to Rick Wilcox, manager over customer service at the Provo post office, they send 10 to 20 passports to the federal passport agency on a daily basis. “But then they just sit there,” Wilcox said.
Hundreds of applications from the Provo post office alone are stacking up at the federal office where hundreds of thousands of applications nationwide are awaiting final processing.
Wilcox thinks it will take five to six weeks for the passport backlog to be caught up when they do reopen their doors.
“We have been suggesting that if people aren’t leaving until after March, they wait until the passport agency is up and running,” Wilcox said.
However for many already waiting to leave the country, getting a passport has become a nightmare.
LDS church spokesman Don LeFevre said because the church works so far in advance on passports and visas, the church’s missionary effort has thus far not been negatively affected by the shutdown.
BYU study abroad and international students haven’t been so lucky. Many can’t get passports to leave, or visas to return to the country.
Federal workers at the Social Security Administration in Provo have been working through the shutdown to provide social security checks to retirees and others. However, they have not been issuing new social security numbers.
“This affects people at BYU who are foreign students who can’t get numbers and can’t get jobs or get paid,” said Randy Marchant, district manager at the Provo office.
