Just weeks after President George W. Bush signed a law delaying a requirement for passports to cross the border between the United States and Canada, the Department of Homeland Security announced new rules requiring more than just a driver’s license to re-enter the U.S beginning next week. This is a clear circumvention of what Congress intended and comes before the department has completed an assessment of alternatives.

Because Congress is unlikely to act before the new rule goes into effect on Jan. 31, those who cross the border from Canada are left with little choice but to grumble – and to carry additional identification.

Still, members of Congress have rightly complained about this backdoor way of requiring passports or additional documentation just as lawmakers decided to delay such requirements because they are too burdensome.

As passed in 2004, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative required a passport of anyone crossing the U.S. border with Mexico and Canada. The original deadline was Jan. 1, 2008, but that was pushed back to June 2009, under a recent spending bill that was signed by President Bush in December.

On Jan. 18, the Department of Homeland Security released rules requiring proof of citizenship to cross the border from Canada. That proof can be an enhanced driver’s license – which only Washington state currently has – or a passport card – which DHS has yet to issue – or “Trusted Traveler Cards,” which truck drivers and other frequent commercial border crossers may obtain from the government.

For those with a regular driver’s license, a birth certificate or naturalization certificate will also be required as proof of identity.

Of course, a passport would be acceptable, too.

The Department of Homeland Security says the additional documentation is required because the current practice of allowing people to verbally declare that they are U.S. citizens is not working. The department’s own statistics show, however, that the vast majority of dishonest declarations are at the border with Mexico, not Canada. The department has not said why it skipped over the obvious solution of requiring driver’s licenses, rather merely someone’s word, as a proof of citizenship. If this, after a period of time, was also inadequate, the department could have moved to more stringent requirements.

It is also telling that the department, in response to questions about why it moved ahead with the new border crossing requirements when Congress told it to wait on the passport requirement, is now emphasizing the need to combat illegal immigration. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was billed as an anti-terrorism measure – never mind that none of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States from Canada or Mexico. Shifting the focus to illegal immigration is a weak rationale for taking a different route to the same end, despite congressional direction to delay the journey.

There were much less extreme ways of improving border security. It is too bad the federal government ignored them.