U.S. Passport Services
Summary
The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs ran on $2.9176 billion and 5,275 people in FY2026 to issue 24.5 million passports and evacuate 10,000-plus citizens from danger zones since 2021 -- the Good Citizen series' entry on the office that decides which document gets you back across the border.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
In 2024 CA issued about 24.5 million passport books and cards⧉ -- a third straight annual record -- and its FY2027 budget projects 24.6 million applications⧉, an all-time high. It runs 35 domestic passport facilities (six more coming), 7,900 acceptance sites, and 11 servicing bureaus⧉, plus 240 overseas posts and 40 consular agencies⧉. Since 2021 it has evacuated more than 10,000 U.S. citizens⧉ from crises in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Haiti, Sudan, and Niger, and funds Repatriation Loans for citizens abroad with no other way home.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
CA's FY2026 CBSP spending totals $2.9176 billion⧉, of which Passport Services alone is $1.4723 billion⧉ -- just over half -- with the rest funding Visa Services, overseas operations, and administration. That runs on 5,275 on-board positions⧉ as of October 2025: 2,755 domestic, 2,093 Foreign Service staff overseas, 427 at other State bureaus. Against the Census Bureau's 341,784,857 U.S. residents (July 2025)⧉, that is $8.54 per person -- though CBSP runs mostly on applicant fees, not general tax revenue.
View data as table
| Passport Services | 1,472.3 |
|---|---|
| Overseas Support | 1,015.3 |
| Visa Services | 320.4 |
| Domestic Executive Support | 85.3 |
| Overseas Citizens Services | 16.3 |
| Fraud prevention + FSN trust fund | 8 |
Why is it good for society?
The statute's exclusivity clause is the mechanism: because only the Secretary of State may verify a passport, no impostor office or state government can legally issue one, which keeps the document trustworthy as identity proof at all. CA's own charge -- securing documents to those eligible while denying them to those who are not⧉ -- treats fraud prevention as inseparable from service. The counterfactual: without an office authorized to issue emergency documents and coordinate evacuations, the 10,000-plus citizens pulled from danger zones since 2021⧉ would have had no institutional path home.
- CA's FY2026 CBSP budget ($2.9176B, of which Passport Services is $1.4723B) funds 5,275 on-board positions -- about $8.54 per U.S. resident.
- In 2024 it issued 24.5 million passports (a third straight record) and, since 2021, evacuated more than 10,000 Americans from crisis zones abroad.
Your handles.* Apply for or renew a passport with Form DS-11 (first-time/minors) or DS-82 (eligible renewals). Check application status or ask about an urgent travel need through the National Passport Information Center (1-877-487-2778). Report an emergency involving a U.S. citizen abroad to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate's American Citizen Services unit.
Sources(5) ▾
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 22 U.S.C. § 211a -- Authority to grant, issue, and verify passports (2024-12-23) — Official U.S. Code text (OLRC) of the statute vesting the Secretary of State with authority to grant, issue, and verify U.S. passports -- source-credited to the Act of July 3, 1926, ch. 772, sec. 1, 44 Stat. 887, as most recently amended by Pub. L. 118-159 (Dec. 23, 2024). Wayback capture unavailable (archive.org CDX probed 2026-07-16, no snapshot / service outage); content fetched and verified directly. uscode.house.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Budget and Planning, Department of State, FY 2027 Congressional Budget Justification -- Diplomatic Engagement, Appendix 1 (2026-05) — State's own FY2027 congressional budget justification, Consular and Border Security Programs (CBSP) chapter -- the source for CA's FY2025/FY2026/FY2027 budget-by-program table, the CBSP staffing (on-board ) table, and CA's own description of its workload, footprint, and mission. Fetched directly from state.gov (HTTP 200) and parsed to text for locator citation; Wayback capture unavailable (archive.org CDX probed 2026-07-16, service returned 503). state.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson (Press Statement, Secretary Antony J. Blinken), Record-Breaking Achievements in U.S. Passport Processing (2024-10-23) — State Department press statement reporting FY2024 passport issuance volume -- the most recent full-fiscal-year issuance count the Department has published in a document this entry could directly retrieve (travel.state.gov's own statistics pages returned a bot-detection block on every fetch attempt). 2021-2025.state.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson (Media Note), Setting Records in U.S. Passport and Visa Services, Spurring Innovation, and Delivering on Our Commitment to Our Fellow Americans Under the Biden-Harris Administration (2025-01-14) — Official Department of State media note (outgoing-administration retrospective) -- the source for the bureau's 2021-2025 citizen-evacuation total and the destination list of crisis zones. 2021-2025.state.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, NST-EST2025-ALLDATA: Annual State Population Estimates and Components of Change (Vintage 2025) (2026-01-27) — Census Bureau's raw Vintage 2025 national/state population-estimates dataset. The 'United States' row's POPESTIMATE2025 column is this entry's per-resident-cost denominator -- the same dataset and value already used in the good-citizen-nps and good-citizen-fna entries. www2.census.gov · original document
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The Secretary of State holds sole legal authority to issue U.S. passports under 22 U.S.C. § 211a⧉, a power dating to the Act of July 3, 1926, last amended December 2024 -- the statute states plainly that "no other entity shall grant, issue, or verify such passports." That authority runs through the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), whose Passport Services Directorate is funded by the Consular and Border Security Programs (CBSP) account Congress created effective FY2019⧉ to run on applicant fees, not general tax dollars.