4/08/2005

U.S. To Tighten the Borders

For quite sometime, taking a quick get-away from the country and returning has been fairly easy to do. An individual simply needs to show a driver’s license when re-entering the U.S. from Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. Federal officials have decided that this won’t be enough in a few years. By the year 2008, Americans will need passports to come home to the United States. This decision was made because of the latest effort to deter terrorists from entering the country. Is this a good decision? For one thing, it will certainly restrict a lot of people. Statistically, only about 20% of the nation’s population have passports. I think there will definitely be some stir over it. Canada has already announced that if this decision is put into effect, they might require passports of Americans.

2 comments:

Eric said...

Wow, I think this would really affect Mexico! Many cities depend on American tourist and by requiring a passport tourism will go way down! As for Canada I think it is a smart move if the U.S. decides to go down this road.

Dr. Tufte said...

I find the interest in this by the public to be inane.

People want secure borders. The traditional way of securing borders is with harder-to-get documents like passports. You can't reasonably substitute a driver's license without making them more difficult to get, or easier for the government to keep track of. People don't seem to want that either. Sorry for my tone here, but the public just seems like a bunch of 4 year olds on this issue - they simply can't have it both ways, and they need to figure that out.