PASSPORTS at the BORDER!!!

Good gravy....soon they'll be required, or alternatively, you may present your (Nazi voice) "PAPERS!!! Let me see your PAPERS!!!!!" The ole driver's license won't cut it anymore. So much for our lovely relationship...hope Canadians will continue to separate the regular people from the crazy government we endure south of the border.... http://www.komotv.com/news/printstory.asp?id=36132

Americans will need passports to re-enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, Panama and Bermuda by 2008, part of a tightening of U.S. border controls in an era of terrorist threat, three administration officials said Tuesday.

Similarly, Canadians will also have to present a passport to enter the United States, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Canadians have been the only foreigners allowed to enter the United States with just a driver's license.

An announcement, expected later Tuesday at the State Department, will specify that a passport or another valid travel document will have to be shown by U.S. citizens, the officials said.

These include a document called Sentri that is used for Mexico travel or a Nexus for Canada travel.

wait and see

...and plan on not coming back. See my link below, I am still soliciting any and all info you might be able to impart re: PEI!!!

It's disheartening that we have to be this way. We are becoming Balkanized, Iron-curtained....sitting here behind a wall, surrounded by cheap shit imported from newly industrialized nations to distract us, barely keeping up, quality of life going down...

I'm not impressed with the way things are going in our land. We need a sea change, and soon. It seems like this shit happens every quarter century or so--the Red Scare, the Nixon enemies, and now, the GOP nazis. It's tiresome, a threat to democracy and so doggone unnecessary.

Mexico will now be out of the question...I understand seizures of medications are also routine...Treasury Dept. Agents. After San Diego, headed north, there's another HUGE checkpoint...I wouldn't be surprised if passports become the norm there too. Unless your skin is white as snow for the time being....then it's going to be bumper stickers...pull over...we need to search your car.

Your Papers Citizen!

you know, just in case I have to flee the country. Although, being in Calgary, where the hell would I go? Edmonton? Please, I'd rather move to Montana. just kidding. Anyway, when I lived in Peru (Canadian citizen) I just got into the habit of always having "my papers" with me. I swear to god, you needed your papers to buy a pack of gum. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but pretty close. My theory is that this will bring in more revenue for (fill in bureaucracy name here).

I hope they realize this.

I grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. My family is still there, so I visit on occasion. The traffic back and forth across the border is enormous! Whether we would pop over to N.F-N.Y for pizza (the very best in the area) or they would come across to the casino, the traffic is constant.

This will now come to a screeching halt.

Actually I thought they're requiring border guards to simply enforce the law. Don't get me wrong this is stupid for various reasons, one big reason is the economy of border towns, another is that the sep/11 attacks wern't committed by Canadian based terrorists, another is that US ports are still wide open, as is the US coast as anyone who watched farenheit 9/11 would see. Nonethless the law technically doesn't think a driver's license cuts it. What they want now is proof of citizenship. They're simply enforcing a requirement for proof of citizenship. A driver's license does not have proof of citizenship, as non-citizen can get a Canadian (or other jurisdictions too) driver's license.

...were made with a passport and a birth certificate. Plus the vaccination for the dog, and the insurance card for the car, where applicable.

Those are documents I can lay my hands on easily. The passport prices are going through the roof due to the new biometrics they are demanding. It's just one more bloody thing, and I don't regard Canadians as enemies to be kept out, I regard them as neighbors. It saddens me, all of this nonsense, and I don't think it will really make our borders more secure. Anyone who thinks they will get stopped will simply find a way to sneak across...it's one helluva long border, after all!

birth certificate and photo drivers license, are all I've ever needed as proof of citizenship in the past. A passport is a new requirement.

Sid

All this talk over the years of a totally open border will finally be over.
What is the difference between flashing a passport and flashing a driver's license? I'm serious... educate me.

What I did find extremely disturbing was watching all these people being finger-printed and eyeball scanned when I had to change planes at the Miami airport last year. On top of that, they had gone through my in-transit luggage which had a big red sticker on it: Do not hand to passenger anywhere on US soil, or something to that effect. Seems like paranoia gone overboard.

So traveling with a passport doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

I know $80 or so spread over five years isn't really much, but to some people - along with the process of applying for a passport (getting references, etc.) - it isn't worth the hassle. I think it's going to deter casual cross border shoppers/tourists unless they ease the sticker shock.

Mrs. Ironflange was. We are getting new passports, and she discovered that her Quebec birth cert is no good any more, due to some sort of changes in the system. So, she gets the forms, fills them out, gets the reference, then we discover that these forms DON'T TELL YOU WHERE TO SEND THEM! Argh! We may say to hell with it for now, use drivers licenses in Alaska this summer. Oh yeah, Quebec wants 20 bucks for this.

that a driver's license IS NOT proof of citizenship. SiDithers and MADem provided documentation that contains proof of citizenship. As they've said the US gov't now want a Passport to prove citizenship, as opposed to other documentation.

Since I generally agree with much of what you say, I'll point out that it's your mistake of fact that may be leading you astray here.

A birth certificate is *not* a proof of citizenship.

In the many long years since I was born in Canada, I could very easily have split, acquired some other citizenship, and renounced my Canadian citizenship.

A birth certificate is proof of birth (and the circumstances of birth), but not of anything else.

A driver's licence, of course, is proof of legal residence in Canada (you can't get a driver's licence unless you are legally resident in Canada, and actually resident in a province, basically). But not of citizenship.

In the good old days, it was good enough for the US to know that someone was legally resident in Canada and born in Canada. Driver's licence + birth certificate (or an expired passport, which I've used) made for a pretty good bet that the person was a Canadian. It wasn't a sure thing, but the disadvantages (not just for the individual) of requiring a passport were seen as outweighing the benefits.

I once arrived at the US border and realized, as I sat in line, that I'd left all my ID (and credit cards) in a jacket pocket hanging on a chair several hundred miles back. The US border guard asked where I was from and what my citizenship was -- didn't ask for a shred of paper to substantiate what I said -- and then asked one of those random question: what was my job? Immigration lawyer, I said. He said something I didn't catch, laughed uproariously at his own joke, I laughed politely back, and he waved me on. I figured later that he must have been asking whether I was going down to drum up business. Ah, the good old days, when being European-Canadian (and female helped, I imagine) was all ya needed.

thanks

"Americans will need passports to re-enter the United States from Canada".

I was all set to say Fine! We won't require passports for USAmericans to enter here, and we'll see how the balance of trade goes then.

But of course the US would demand that we require them anyhow, because otherwise some unsavoury character from some foreign country might get into Canada from the US to avoid detection there, and then try to get back in to do something unsavoury and foreign at a later date ...

Doubters as to what effect this may have on local US economies should consider the volume of travel that is families, say to Disney World in Florida -- or on cheaper excursions to the sunny south. Adding an extra 2 or 3 hundred bucks onto the cost of that trip might be the proverbial straw in some cases, as somebody on the news pointed out the other day.

Will people in southern Ontario bother going to the considerable hassle, and expense, of getting a passport just to go browse the malls on the other side?

Heck, even getting a birth certificate is an expensive pain in the ass these days. A few months ago, when I finally had to get around to getting one of those new OHIP photo ID cards, I started figuring out how to replace the birth certificate I thought had been stolen with my purse a couple of years ago. The process was almost identical to getting a passport -- guarantor and all: not cheap, and not fast. Luckily for me, I found the birth certificate packaged up with the expired passport (older than 5 years isn't good enough for getting an OHIP card now). Anybody who needs a birth certificate *and* a passport -- let alone for more than one person -- is going to need money and foresight.