One thing that everyone who travels in and out of the United States needs to know about is passport rules and regulations. While the previous laws allowed US citizens to travel to border countries with nothing more than a birth certificate or driver’s license, that is no longer the case. Today, a passport to Canada or Mexico is necessary whenever traveling.
Prior to 2009, entering and exiting the country to border countries was pretty easy. If the traveler had a driver’s license or birth certificate, they could pretty much come and go as they pleased. Circumstances have changed and travelers now need passports for destinations that never required it before.
The new 2009 law requires passports for any travel outside of the U.S. This law applies to land, sea, and air travel. Although this law was implemented nearly 8 years after the September 11th attacks of 2001, many people point to 9/11 as the motivation behind the law.
According to the government, these rules were put in place to tighten up our security and make the country a safer place. Previously, illegal immigrants would travel into Canada or Mexico and pass through the borders fairly easily. Driver’s licenses and birth certificates were fairly easy to forge and the new documentation makes it much more difficult to gain entry to the United States.
Although the law would seem to make perfect sense, many of the citizens on the bordering states are up in arms about the inconvenience that has been posed to them. There are outcries that it is ridiculous to have to carry a passport to Canada when we have traveled so freely in the past. These same people are not taking the time to consider that these border countries are the very means by which terrorists have previously entered our country.
The government continues to stick to their guns in that this definitely improves the overall security of the country. While no system is perfect, it does at least add one more safe guard to be in place to attempt to prevent illegal entry into the country. However, they do recognize that getting and carrying a passport can be somewhat of an inconvenience and there are new measures in place to help with this.
One of the new forms of identification that can be used in place of a regular passport is a passport card. They are much less expensive to obtain than a standard passport and they are also a lot easier to carry. Instead of carrying a big, bulky passport folder, they can have documentation that will fit into the same space that a driver’s license would normally occupy.
It is perfectly understandable why the government is going through such lengths to protect the US borders. Illegal immigration and terrorism is always a hot topic for politicians to banter over during elections times. However, it is also nice to see a small concession that makes it possible for the casual traveler to have a convenient document to use when they would normally need a standard U.S. Passport Card to Canada or Mexico. Learn more about rush USA passports today!