In my posting about the Great Wolf Lodge open house called Jimmy the hotelier: Believe it or not!, a couple of comments were left about how the US wants all people travelling to the US to have a passport. I responded that I didn’t think it would happen. In yesterday’s paper, there was an article in the paper about how the US is backing off this.
From The StarPhoenix:
The United States government is tempering its heavily criticized plans to require passport checks of Canadians entering the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working with Canada to develop a new, alternative cross-border identification card that would satisfy security requirements, but would be cheaper and easier to obtain than a passport, a U.S. official said Thursday.
“An alternative card would be lower in cost and would be easier to carry – it would be wallet sized – for people who don’t want to pay the fee for a passport. That’s something we’re examining now,” said Homeland Security spokesman Jarrod Agen.
“We’re working on this with the Canadian government. We would administer a card for our citizens, and the Canadian government would work with us to see what they could do (for Canadians).”