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 Travel & Outdoors | January 2008 
Tougher Border ID Rules to Take Effect Thursday
 Arthur H. Rotstein - Associated Press
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 |  | Those who do not present those documents ... may be delayed in entering the country as we try to verify the identity as well as determine the citizenship of the individual.
- Jayson Ahern |  | | | |
Tucson, Ariz. — New rules for the types of identification U.S. or Canadian citizens must present to cross into the country from Mexico take effect Thursday, but a senior federal official said they shouldn’t cause significant delays and won’t be strictly enforced at first.
People simply declaring to immigration officers at border crossings that they’re citizens will no longer be enough, Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Tuesday.
Instead, those 19 and older will have to show proof of citizenship — a passport, trusted traveler card or, for the time being, a birth certificate and government-issued ID such as a driver’s license — when crossing into the United States through a port of entry.
“We’ll be asking those who cross our borders to present to us secure, more reliable documents to prove citizenship and to confirm their identity,” said Ahern, who is heading a national effort to call attention to the changes.
“Those who do not present those documents ... may be delayed in entering the country as we try to verify the identity as well as determine the citizenship of the individual,” he said.
But Ahern also said officers at the ports will have latitude to let people who are unaware of the changes enter the country once their identity is confirmed.
Congress approved the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative in 2004, which requires verified citizenship and identification of all those entering the country by air, land or sea from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. The passport requirement for land and sea crossings has been delayed until June 2009.
Mexican citizens will continue to have to present valid passports and visas. Canadian citizens previously were not required to show a passport, but will need one after next year.
“In the post-9/11 world, oral declarations are simply not enough to secure the country’s borders,” Ahern said. Enabling drug and human smugglers, homicide suspects and other criminals as well as terrorists to gain access simply by declaring themselves U.S. citizens is too much to risk, he said.
He said he wasn’t just being hypothetical, noting that from fiscal 2005 to fiscal 2007, 31,000 people who claimed at the borders to be U.S. citizens weren’t, including 535 such cases at Nogales in the past fiscal year. “That’s unacceptable,” Ahern said.
The plan has drawn criticism along both borders, with congressional critics from northern border states lambasting Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff earlier this month, accusing him of not understanding “the practical effects of DHS policies on the everyday lives of border community residents.”
Many critics contend that the changes will only hurt border economies.
“Our goal is not to stifle travel to Mexico,” Ahern said.
Applications for passport cards about the size of credit cards that can be scanned through a reader should be available starting Friday, he said.
Processing the applications will take three to four months, but the cards will be effective and efficient for crossing the Mexican border, he said. Enhanced drivers’ licenses also will be accepted, he added.
Ahern said he does not expect delays at entry ports over the new requirements — contradicting Chertoff’s comments earlier this month that longer lines will be inevitable at first.
“Until people get the message, there will be some delays,” Chertoff said. |
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