The United States will issue secure identification cards for travel between the United States and Mexico or Canada, backing off of an earlier rule that would have required passports for such travel.

    U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff announced a new three-part strategy for securing the border earlier this year that no longer includes the controversial plan to require passports for everyone entering the United States. U.S. citizens, however, will still need a passport to enter this country by air or boat, beginning Jan. 1, 2007.

    The passport requirement was one of many new regulations enacted in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. According to the U.S. government, fraudulent travel documents have been used as a tool to cross borders and violate immigration laws without detection. Working with international partners, DHS and the State Department have sought global compliance with standards that will establish more secure travel documents, by incorporating the latest technological advances to protect personal identity and expedite safe and secure travel across international borders.

Less expensive passport card

    Rice and Chertoff said the State Department and DHS will produce an inexpensive, secure, biometric passport card as an alternative to a traditional passport book for use by U.S. citizens in border communities who frequently cross land borders. The card, which will be issued starting in late 2006, will meet the land border crossing requirements of the statutory Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. The initiative requires that anyone applying for admission to the United States, including U.S. citizens, present secure travel documents that denote citizenship and serve as proof of identity.

    The move was applauded by the Border Trade Alliance, a leader and authority on international trade and commerce throughout North America.

    “This new travel document begins to address the concerns of thousands of U.S. citizens who reside along our northern and southern borders,” said Pete Sepulveda, Jr., chairman of the BTA board of directors. “Our government has shown a willingness to reach out to border stakeholders in light of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative’s potential to put border communities’ way of life at a disadvantage.”

    The passport alternative will come in the form of a durable, wallet-size card that incorporates advanced technologies, all at a reduced cost.

    “We’re pleased with the progress made so far,” said Sepulveda. “We still have much work to do in ensuring that the traveling public is aware of these new requirements.”

    DHS and the State Department ultimately will offer a platform so that travelers can benefit from expedited or trusted traveler programs at all U.S. ports of entry. Members of existing trusted traveler programs such as FAST, NEXUS and SENTRI will continue to receive these program benefits.

Other initiatives

    The increased use of Machine Readable Passports with digitized photographs has heightened security and added protection against identity theft without adding to traveler waiting times at ports. The next generation of international travel documents – e-passports that contain a contactless chip to which biometric and biographic information is written – will further strengthen international border security by ensuring that both the document is authentic and that the person carrying an e-passport is the person to whom the document was issued, while ensuring the person’s privacy. The United States, like many other governments, is in the early stages of issuing such documents, in accordance with international standards, and will complete its transition to exclusive production of e-passports by the end of 2006.

    DHS and the State Department will align travel document application processes by creating a Global Enrollment Network so data need only be captured once from an applicant, whether the person is encountered first by DHS or the State Department. This data could then be viewed by both DHS and State officers, as appropriate, to verify a traveler’s identity, citizenship, and other information that will help facilitate the admission process at the border.

US-VISIT

    Through US-VISIT, DHS officers can screen foreign passengers entering the United States against integrated databases which contain information on individuals with criminal, immigration violation, or terrorism-related history. Between January 2004 and December 2005, DHS has processed 45 million people under this new system, intercepting more than 970 persons with prior or suspected criminal or immigration violations based on biometrics alone. DHS has done this without making travelers wait any longer at air and sea ports of entry and have significantly reduced processing times at many land ports of entry through automation of old paper-based processes.

    One of the lessons learned from 9/11 is the power of using intelligence about the way suspected terrorists travel, since this is a critical vulnerability in their ability to carry out international operations.

    The Terrorist Screening Center is a center that coordinates terrorist watch list information across all agencies of the U.S. government. DHS, State, and the Department of Justice as well as other agencies are co-located and work closely together to screen terrorists.  Intelligence has repeatedly confirmed that such innovations have shaken the confidence of terrorists that they can readily enter the United States.

    The Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center also converts intelligence to law-enforcement action, canvassing a large body of information about human smugglers, traffickers and terrorist travel facilitators. The center has also become a focal point for cooperation on these problems with foreign governments.

    A critical obstacle to cooperation across the Federal government is to integrate data created by different agencies for different systems and different purposes. State Department officers now have access to information that may help detect ineligible aliens, find fraud, and improve the efficiency and security of visa cases. Similarly, near real-time data on every visa issued is sent directly to Customs and Border Protection officers at ports of entry so that they can compare electronic files of every traveler entering the United States. All such sharing is done in a manner consistent with privacy rights and civil liberties.

    These improvements open the way for “paperless” visa processing. Electronic collection of visa information will further strengthen screening systems. State will pilot a fully electronic visa application by December 2006, to expand the collection and use of information. Going even further, State and DHS will conduct a joint pilot project to test a “paperless” visa system in which DHS officers will have electronic access to visas, passports, and biometric information.

    Once able to share data, the two agencies must then coordinate what they will do with it. Part of the joint vision is to harmonize screening information. DHS and State, working with other key agencies, will standardize screening criteria by the end of 2006 for consistency at every screening location and create a virtual clearinghouse by the end of 2007 to unify data that screeners now get from many different systems.

    Sometimes mistakes are made. Travelers need simpler ways to fix them. Therefore, DHS and State will accelerate efforts to establish a government-wide traveler screening redress process to resolve questions if travelers are incorrectly selected for additional screening.

    As the United States’ systems and data improve, the State Department and DHS want to make these initiatives globalA central topic in this diplomacy is development of a common approach to protecting the privacy of the data, both in the way it is collected and the way it is shared.