Travelrific® Travel Journal
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Passport Cards Offer Convenience for Travelers
By Linda Tancs
Marketed as a less expensive and more portable form of passport book, the passport card gives U.S. travelers returning from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean a wallet-sized form of entry at seaports and land borders to meet the requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. The card does not, however, replace the need for a passport when traveling by air. Like a traditional passport, the card is expected to have anti-counterfeiting features. Each card will also have an embedded radio frequency chip linking non-personal information to a secure government database at border stations. Applications for the card commenced on February 1, 2008 and delivery is expected in the spring. You can apply at any passport application facility. Find the one nearest you at http://travel.state.gov.
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What’s New in the Western Hemisphere: Part Deux
By Linda Tancs
Attention all procrastinators: time is up for winging it through the Western Hemisphere without official documentation. You may recall that passport requirements were relaxed in the wake of an avalanche of applications that were filed (and very much delayed) to meet the new requirements. Effective today, you must have passport in hand for your flights to Mexico, Canada, Bermuda and the Caribbean. Limited exceptions (in the way of military travel, for instance) apply. Still don’t have that passport? Expedited service is running at about 3 weeks, they say. Go for it.
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What’s New in the Western Hemisphere?
By Linda Tancs
It should come as no surprise that there’s a run on passports these days. Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, U.S. citizens traveling via air between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda now need a passport. For the time being at least, the passport is lauded as the best documentation of identity and citizenship. But is it “hassle free”? With the advent of the biometric (data encoded) passport, concerns are rampant that the passport holder’s identifying information is subject to hacking, giving rise to a cottage industry in anti-hacking devices. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes.
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