Hot off the AP wire:
High-security driver’s licenses aimed at letting U.S. citizens return from Canada without a passport could be adopted elsewhere if Washington state’s experiment works, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.
The pilot project, signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire and formally approved by Chertoff on Friday, calls for Washington to begin issuing new “enhanced” driver’s licenses in January.
They will look much like conventional driver’s licenses, but will be loaded with proof of citizenship and other information that can be easily scanned at the border.
This would be aimed at the ongoing documentation crunch created with the new requirement that folks entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean by air or sea present a passport, and the plan to extend that requirement to land crossings next January.
The, um, ever-efficient State Department apparently hasn’t adequately staffed up to handle the increased demand for passports, and a process that used to take weeks is now taking months.
This would sound like a no-brainer to me…except that in the not-too-distant future, the process of getting a drivers license is also expected to become painfully bureaucratic.