Getting a passport may be no big deal for
travel professionals, but it is for millions of Americans who don't
have one and who aren't inclined to travel where one is required.
That is why the
travel industry just fought, and won, a significant lobbying
victory on Capitol Hill.
The enemy was the
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a plan by the Departments of
State and Homeland Security to require all visitors to the U.S.,
and all returning citizens, to present a passport or other secure
I.D.
To be blunt, the
administration did a poor job of setting deadlines and helping
affected parties, including border states and the business
community here and abroad, understand what was going to happen and
when.
As things stood two
weeks ago, passports were to be required as of Jan. 8 for returning
air and sea passengers from destinations in North America. The rule
was to be extended to land border crossing a year later, we
think.
For people in
border states who make frequent crossings, the government was going
to create a cheaper alternative to the passport, called a Pass
Card. But the Pass Card, 
which would include some
sort of biometric identifier, was not going to be ready in
time.
With the exception
of the airlines, whose passengers are resigning themselves to the
necessity of having a passport to fly internationally, nobody in
the travel business was content with this state of affairs. As one
lobbyist put it, "Everybody had skin in the game": the big cruise
lines, hotels, coach operators, bed and breakfasts in the border
states, the business travel community. The list goes on.
When the dust
cleared, land and sea travelers had a new deadline for the passport
requirement -- June 1, 2009, and Congress made it quite clear that
there was to be one deadline for both land and sea. It also made it
quite clear that the administration could advance the deadline, but
only if it met several specific requirements -- including a
successful launch of the Pass Card program.
Travel Industry
Association president Roger Dow called it a "tremendous victory,"
and rightly so. The travel industry often gets pushed around on
Capitol Hill. In this instance, various segments of the industry
came together and made the case. Slam dunk.
Tear down
this fence
We're generally in accord with Robert
Frost's dictum that "good fences make good neighbors." It's a great
line, but we hasten to add that he was a poet, not a policymaker,
and was speaking metaphorically, based on experience in an
agricultural and residential context. He wasn't addressing the U.S.
Congress about immigration reform.
Certain kinds of
fences aren't good at all, and the example that comes readily to
mind is the 700-mile monstrosity that Congress has ordered up
across our border with Mexico in the Secure Fence Act of
2006.
What an awful
signal to send to Mexico, to the world, to our children.
It's one thing for
the government to declare "war on terror." That's the sort of thing
governments do to mobilize the citizenry to a cause (the war on
poverty, the war on crime, the war on drugs). But this war has lost
its focus. In the name of "security" it has infected our public
life with intolerance and xenophobia, of which the Secure Fence Act
is the most recent and most gross example.
Congress has
adjourned so that its members can go home and run for reelection.
We should send them back with instructions to repeal this awful
Act.