The Bush administration is planning to announce that it will ease into the more stringent passport rules planned for next year in order to minimize the waiting time caused by a backlog of nearly 3 million applications. This announcement comes in the wake of angered U.S. citizens, many of whom are forced to wait up to three months to receive their passports – doubling the normal waiting period. "By the end of September, we will get to eight weeks, and by the end of the year, back to six weeks" processing time, Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. Harty also acknowledged that officials had failed to predict how many Americans would apply for a passport immediately once the new rules took effect in January. Nearly 5.4 million passport applications were filed in just a few months. The increased processing time is due to new regulations this year that require passports for U.S. citizens flying to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean.
