The new passport requirements

The Departments of State and Homeland Security in their infinite wisdom have announced that by the beginning on 2008 the number of documents that can be used to enter the United States will be strictly limited. This will not affect travel between the US and Europe, only travel between the US and the countries where Americans can currently travel without a passport, which are currently Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and most or all of the Carribean.

Passports will be required, both for Americans and for the citizens of those countries. The Departments are also considering allowing Border Crossing Cards, SENTRI, NEXUS and FAST program cards instead of passports. (The BCCs are what Mexicans traveling in the US use now, I have no idea what those others are.)

On one hand, I personally think that a passport is not a lot to ask for at a border crossing. On the other hand, tens of millions of Americans who don't have passports but travel to passport-free countries, and probably a similar number of the citizens of those countries, as well as their travel agents, probably think otherwise. They are gonna be pretty inconvenienced, and, knowing my fellow citizens' tendency to read fine print, most of them probably will not figure out that they need a passport in 2.5 years' time. Expect wailing, lamentations, threats to sue everyone, and passport lines that would hopefully dissipate by the time my own passport is up for a renewal.

Can't say I am actively for or against the new measure, I am just marveling at the futility of it as an antiterrorist measure in a country that has two very long and rather badly guarded borders.