Seen at USA Today:
The Homeland Security Department is vigorously fighting a move by Congress to delay a requirement that U.S. citizens show a passport to re-enter the country by land or sea from Mexico, Canada, Bermuda or the Caribbean, saying it puts the nation’s borders at risk.[...]
The new rules for land and sea travelers are set to be phased in beginning in January 2008. Congress wants to move the deadline to June 2009, at the earliest.
Considering how bureaucratic border crossing can be, and considering the issues the State Department is having with actually getting passports into folks’ hands, I think the Geheimstaatspolizei needs a dose of realism.
While border security is important, the ability for folks and goods to move across the border for legitimate purposes is also important.
Perhaps the process of tightening up documentation requirements at the border could be improved by:
- Revising the rule to say, essentially, “drivers licenses and state-issued ID’s issued on/after January 1, 2008 shall not be sufficient for identification when entering the country by land, sea, or air;
- Doing the necessary legal mumbo-jumbo and hand-waving to get state DMV’s authorized to accept passport applications beginning January 1, 2008, hopefully streamlining the process of getting passports into the hands of folks who newly need them;
and - Wasn’t there a move afoot to come up with some sort of super-ID that would be sufficient for transiting between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean without actually requiring passports? Perhaps the launch of such a program could be combined with the first two points above.