Next week marks another chapter in a long, often confusing saga of changing U.S. entry rules: As of Monday, U.S. airline passengers will once again need to carry a valid passport when traveling to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean or Bermuda.
This summer, after a deluge of applications and complaints of months-long backups, the Bush administration had temporarily waived new passport requirements that took effect Jan. 23 under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. (Travelers still needed proof that they'd applied for a passport.)
Now, with extra staff on board and the summer travel crunch over, the State Department says it has cut passport processing times to six weeks for a routine application and three weeks for expedited service. For the fiscal year ending Sunday, the department issued an estimated 18 million passports, up from 12.1 million in 2006.
Starting Jan. 31, Americans returning by land or sea from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean must, for the first time, show either a valid passport or both a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship and government-issued photo ID such as a driver's license.
But what happens next remains uncertain.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/...irements_N.htm
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09-30-2007, 03:51 AM
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