Passports

Looks like another strike on tourism.. I am all for security, but this is getting out of control. Now to fish in Canada, you will have to get a passport for a week. We are planning on a Disney Cruise in 2006 and now even our grand daughter who will be one and a half will have to have a passport. If this would really stop terriorists and illegal immigration, it would be worth it, but does one really believe that.!!! Anyway, the passport department should be raking in the $$$, especially with a new increase for both new and renewals... What's your take on this????

[Mike M]

About time.

Here are my opinions and I'm sticking to them.

I have always felt that if you travel without a passport you are asking for trouble. You may not always have the ship to take you home. A passport is a requirement for International travel. International means outside of the United States.

Disregarding security I find that if you are going make a rule you need to make it across the board. Therefore all citizens regardless of age need a passport.

It also makes cruising easier. No more worry about if you need a raised seal birth certificate; marriage license; baptism certificate; uncle Fred's signature on a bar napkin or whatever for valid ID.

You can now go to some place other than the Caribbean or Mexico if you want to.

It should have been done years ago.

Take care,
Mike(Has had a passport for 28 years)

I see absolutely nothing wrong with passport requirements and think it's long overdue. In most countries of the world, a passport is needed to cross the borders. If someone is determined to get into the US, it is not a passport that is going to prevent them from doing so.... but 9/11 was a wake up call for the US and made immigration take a look at how lax the comings and goings at some of our borders are. A passport is a universally accepted document of citizenship and with that there is never an issue of having an appropriate birth certificate or other id. There have been many stops at Canadian and Mexican borders that have yielded intelligence and items that could have been detrimental to the security of the US and had those people who had been attempting to cross been required to produce a passport it would have been another screening process that they would have been required to clear.

After 9/11 the US citizens were very adamant about homeland security but as time has passed people have gone back to their pre-9/11 ways. Granted no one will ever forget 9/11 but many people have short memories of the security lapses that caused 9/11.
<IMHO>

[Thomas]

I agree with Mike, this should have been a requirement many years ago. Just remember, international travel was not that common amongst the masses until the proliferation of jet airplanes.

Todays' populace is much more mobile. With millions of people moving through hundreds of countries everyday it makes perfect sense to require a government issued identification document to verify legal residency.

Regards,
Thomas

What Mike and Booboo said.

It's not like passports are a new idea. When I had to get my first one in the 1960's it never occurred to me to grouse about it. They're just a fact of travel life. Tighening up the requirements to make them required everywhere is long overdue.

As for them not helping with security. . .

For the entire year of 2003 I served on a Federal grand jury in the jurisdiction that includes both Washington DC airports. Throughout the many, many cases we heard over those twelve months I got to see the good, the bad and the ugly about the inner workings of post 9/11 airport security in the Nation's Capital.

Without revealing the details of any cases, I can tell you unequivocally that there are people in jail today--or who have been sent back where they came from--simply because their forged passports were easily detected at the point of entry. Officials will tell you (as they told us), that their intense training regarding the ins and outs of that particular document will catch far more irregularities than being forced to decipher all manner of inferior identification documents. It was fascinating and impressive to be handed copies of bogus passports and be schooled by professionals on how they were easily spotted as fakes.

Enough said.

Get the passport and get over it.

[LisaK]

we American's seem to forget that we are only one country on this entire planet. If we lived in anyother country, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

[Darcy]

I agree with Mike too. It's about time. Everyone in my family has a passport (including the children). I wouldn't dream of traveling without one.