Bridgette wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 2:10 am
Does anyone know if it’s faster/worth a trip to the consulate in NYC, or if mailing it in works just as well?
I doubt personal delivery would make it any faster than overnight mail. It takes several weeks to process. I got my passport about a year ago. From what I understand, the consulate does some checking/processing, then forwards it to Dublin for final processing. Mine didn't appear in the online tracking portal until seven weeks after it was received in San Francisco. So it was apparently there for quite a while. Eleven days after it first appeared in the portal, it was printed and dispatched. The passport is sent back to the consulate, and they will send it to you.
The whole process took about ten weeks for me - which was a lot less than the initial estimates they gave me. That said, a lot has changed (and apparently is still changing) since I got my FBR and my passport about a year ago. My FBR took four months - just to illustrate the difference between now and then.
So your passport application is likely going to the end of a long processing queue in NYC, where it will wait its turn for a few weeks.