Angry Traveler: Oh, no, not again — passport rules

Can this possibly be more confusing?

Congress has voted to delay the rule that requires a passport for land crossings into the U.S. It was to have gone into effect in summer 2008. Now it’s going to be summer 2009.

But you’ll still need one for air travel.

It’s part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which went into effect in early 2007 and resulted in a record number of passport applications — more than 18 million — and a doubling of the waiting time for a passport as passport adjudicators tried to cope with the backlog.

Things got so bad last summer that the implementation of the new “passport if by air” rule was delayed until Sept. 30. The State Department finally caught up and was just beginning to catch its breath before it changed again.

Should Americans be required to have a passport just to return by car from Mexico or Canada?

The Bush administration is opposed to the delay, but because it was slipped into an omnibus spending bill, the president probably will sign it.

So the good news is that the passport debacle probably won’t be replayed, at least not this year.

The bad news: Does anyone really understand what you need to get back into this country?

The worst news: Who’s to say we’ll be ready to deal with the increase in requests even by summer 2009?

—Catharine Hamm / Los Angeles Times Travel Editor

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 11:11 pm by Catharine Hamm and is filed under Angry Traveler, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.