U.S. Announces Plan To Improve Border Security
The U.S. Homeland Security Department is developing “inexpensive, efficient, interoperable documents” that will serve as identification documents by Americans who travel across the Mexican or Canadian borders on a regular basis, according to Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff.
In the spring of 2005, the department had announced that by 2008 U.S. citizens would need to use passports in order to travel back into the United States from Mexico or Canada, but Chertoff now says that travelers will “not necessarily” need passports to reenter the United States from those countries and can use the new identity documents instead.
Chertoff also said that starting in 2007, the U.S. government will only issue electronic-based passports containing biometric data, with traditional paper-only passports being eliminated from use as they expire.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the New York Times (01/17/06)
