The decision, which applies to US citizens worldwide, will relieve some of the massive pressure on the US consular services in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There was a 15,000-person backlog for passport renewals and visas as of last month, following a reduction in appointments available due to COVID-19 restrictions, and appointments were canceled last week during the escalation between Israel and Hamas.
The expired passport rule will only apply to people traveling to the US from abroad, and can only be used once.
The only passports that can be used are those that expired after January 1, 2020, and only until December 31, 2021.
The passport cannot be damaged and the original passport must be in the traveler’s possession. It applies only to regular, not temporary passports.
Continued COVID-19 restrictions sharply limited the embassy’s ability to provide services, US Consul-General Andrew T. Miller told The Jerusalem Post in April.
He is responsible for all US consular services, including passports, reports of birth, visas and green cards at the US Embassy in Jerusalem and its Branch Office in Tel Aviv.
Even in a normal year, the embassy in Israel is one of the busiest places in the world for US passports and reports of birth, he said.
“Sometimes…Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are themselves No. 1 and No. 2 in the world when it comes to citizenship documents,” Miller said. “We think that there are more Americans living in Israel than anywhere else in the world except Mexico. Our ballpark estimate is that one out of every seven Israelis is a dual-national. The concentration of Americans in this country is beyond comparison.”
Then, the coronavirus pandemic came along, mostly shutting down consular services for about 10 months. Last April, they completely shuttered offices, opening up only for individual emergency travel, such as for life-saving medical procedures or to visit a dying relative.
“We basically lost a year’s worth of work,” Miller said.
In a normal year, the embassy processes 17,000 US passports; in 2020, it fell 15,000 short of that.
“We’re trying to chip away at that mountain,” Miller said.
In April of 2020, the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem offices issued 45 passports, but around the same time this year, they issued 2,000, he said.