Budget bill delays Canadian border passport requirement

Passports won’t be necessary for travelers entering the United States by land until mid-2009 – a year later than planned – if a budget bill passed Thursday by Congress gets the approval of President Bush.

A provision in the bill pushes back by a year the plan by the Department of Homeland Security to require passports from border crossers from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean as a way of strengthening national security.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he expects President Bush to sign the bill, despite the administration’s insistence on implementing the passport requirement next summer.

The passport requirement has been a sore point in border states.

“This delay is very, very helpful and gives us a chance to do the right thing as opposed to the quickest thing,” said Bill Stenger, president of Jay Peak ski area in Vermont, near the Canadian border. “It’s a major step.”

Last summer, Leahy and U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska introduced legislation to delay the passport requirement. The House passed it the day after the Senate, and the legislation cleared Congress on Thursday as part of a multiagency budget bill.

“The passport requirement is the wrong answer to the wrong question. It creates major hassles for law-abiding citizens and communities all across the longest peaceful border in the world,” Leahy said in a statement. “It adds nothing to our security while costing Vermont and our national economy billions in lost commerce.”

Even though the passport requirement is likely to be postponed, New Englanders and others will still need birth certificates or similar identification to enter the United States by land beginning Jan. 31.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday, Leahy called the birth certificate requirement “unwise, ill considered and counterproductive.” Leahy asked Chertoff for the legal authority to unilaterally impose the birth certificate requirement.

The passport requirement is part of efforts by Homeland Security to tighten security at the nation’s borders.

But people along the Vermont and Maine borders with Canada say that a passport requirement could disrupt the long-established practices of moving freely from one country to another and cost businesses millions of dollars.

Leahy said the passports would stifle commerce while doing little to protect the country.

“Instead, for only a fraction of that expense, we could and should be beefing up our intelligence and working with Canada to seek out potential terrorists long before they even get near our borders,” Leahy said.

Leahy said that before any requirements for increased documentation take effect, Homeland Security should have the technical infrastructure ready to implement it and that technology would have to be shared with the governments of Canada and Mexico.