In honor of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which takes effect today.

[randomness]

"Can I see some ID?" is American for "Papers, please!"

I'm all for everyone getting a passport. I'm against more regulations making it harder to cross borders.

State and Homeland Security’s Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).
The American Immigraton Lawyers Association comments on WHTI.

Comments

[julianyap.livejournal.com]

Really? I mean I'm all for faster methods to cross borders and more convenient border crossings, but I'm definitely against unsecure borders.

Besides, you need your passport to go to any other country, don't see why Canada and Mexico are different.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Did you *read* the AILA's comments?

Until Tuesday, you didn't need a passport to go to something over 25 countries and jurisdictions. (I haven't counted, it may be more than 30.)

And you don't need a passport to travel between the 27 countries of the EU, which last time I checked were still countries and have some pretty good border controls.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

To be more exact:

EU nationals don't need a passport to travel between the 27 countries of the EU, which have some pretty good external border controls.

So, that's my point: good external border controls, and free movement of peoples within the internal area. The EU is a good example.

(And that's an example in the AILA's comments, which is why I asked.)

[cks.livejournal.com]

This is belated, but what the heck: my attitude on this whole mess is that I am violently against the United States government having the right or the ability to stop US citizens from returning to the US when they do not have a specific document, because it is a very short step from that to the government grabbing the power to bar US citizens from returning to the country by refusing to issue them the document that they need to do so.

Make it easier to enter with a passport? Sure. Make it a legal requirement that you have a passport to enter, and that even if you are an acknowledged US citizen you cannot enter without the passport? I say 'no way', and I hope that someone takes a case about this all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary and the government loses badly. Once you have it, US citizenship is a right, not a privilege, and in my opinion with it comes the right (not the privilege, to be hedged with government conditions and possibly withdrawn) to enter the US.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's a very good point.

For clarity, when I said, "I'm all for everyone getting a passport," I didn't mean "I'm all for everyone being forced to get one," but rather "I'm all for everyone getting a passport because they think they'd like to have one so they can go and visit countries not in North America and the Caribbean."

What I actually said scans better, however. :)