Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Many in U.S. to need passport

By Lornet Turnbull

Seattle Times staff reporter

If you travel to the Caribbean, Mexico or even Canada, the federal government soon will require that you have a valid passport to get back home.

And for the first time, our Canadian neighbors also will need a passport to travel south of the border.

"Border officers now are looking at car after car and all manner of ID — birth certificates, driver's licenses from every state, church-denomination cards — all of which are ripe for creating fraudulent documents. It's much harder to create a fraudulent passport."

I'm a semi-regular traveller to Canada, and I've always felt like I was getting away with something. International travel really ought to require a passport, shouldn't it?

We're still living in a post 9-11 world, and that means no more short cuts.

I suspect some people will increase their international travel. If a traveller already has a passport for her trips to Mexico and Canada, there's one less barrier if she decides to take a trip abroad.

1 comment:

jsb said...

That reminds me. I need to renew mine before it expires.