Cherty goes head to head with Congress over border crossing initiative

It will be interesting to see what happens with this initiative if the POTUS torch is passed
to a Democrat. Current delays at the major US airports are now at a high (there a great graphic in one of the last issues of Wired showing average delays and rankings of the top 30 airports
and the East Coast has like 3 of the top 5 "most delayed" airports). Will this border crossing rule lead to large queues of people at the border trying to get in? This is definitely going to cause some trouble in Michigan, where the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor, Ontario enjoys probably the single highest rate of crossing in the country.

Chertoff to defy Congress with new border-crossing ID rules
By Chris Strohm, CongressDaily

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff Wednesday said new border-crossing requirements will go into effect at the end of the month, despite opposition from Congress and concerns from state officials that commerce and tourism will be disrupted. Chertoff said the department plans to begin phasing in new requirements under the so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. "On Jan. 31 of this year, we'll be making some changes at the land border," Chertoff said in a speech to a border security advisory panel in Washington. The new rules will apply to travelers coming into the United States at land crossings from Canada and Mexico and by water from the Caribbean. Border inspectors will no longer accept oral declarations of citizenship, meaning U.S. citizens will have to present documentation proving they reside in the country, Chertoff said. He said the department will also begin preparations to limit the types of documents that can be used to prove citizenship. Border inspectors now accept about 8,000 different documents, many in the form of birth certificates issued by a variety of jurisdictions. Last year, Homeland Security began requiring people coming into the United States by air from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean to present a passport or other government-approved identification document.

Chertoff said compliance rates for the air rules have reached 99 percent. But he did not mention problems and delays that U.S. citizens had obtaining passports from the State Department last year, with delays so acute that Homeland Security had to delay implementation of the air rules for six months. The passport trouble also drew the ire of lawmakers. Congress responded by recently passing legislation that prohibits the department from fully implementing the land crossing rules until June 2009. "Congress has mandated a delay for the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative ... but [Homeland Security] will nevertheless, in the intervening time, take some reasonable and very important measures to eliminate what I consider to be unacceptable vulnerabilities at our land border," Chertoff said.

Full story: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39048&dcn=e_hsw