Today's comment is by Bob Bauman, Legal Counsel and author of many books and reports on second citizenship and the offshore world.
Dear A-Letter Reader,
The so-called "Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative" (WHTI) is the brainchild of faceless (and, it would seem brainless) bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. These worthies spend billions of Americans' tax dollars with the professed goal of catching terrorists, but they display the common and practical sense of a two-year-old.
In a nutshell, the WHTI required all American citizens to present a valid passport when flying home to the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda, after January 23, 2007. (In January 2008 the projected plan was that a passport would be required to leave and return to the U.S. by all modes of transportation.)
The official requirements according to the U.S. State Department website were: "All persons, including U.S. citizens, traveling by air between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda will be required to present a valid passport, Air NEXUS card, or U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Document, or an Alien Registration Card, Form I-551, if applicable."
The Run on Passports
We have been warning for months that these rigid requirements would result in a massive passport mess. We also said that, given the unreasonable time frame, this imminent fiasco was beyond immediate solution. In recent weeks, thousands of frustrated, angry Americans lined up at passport offices all across the country, and the U.S. State Department mails were clogged with piles of passport applications submitted months ago. So the helpful government finally did something.
The "something" was to allow a piece of paper showing one had applied for a passport to be accepted as a passport on reentry. Those caught in the passport trap were instructed to go to the State Department Internet website and fill in a form, then print it out and use it as an interim passport. Too bad if you didn't have a computer or a printer. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives took the matter into its own hands and voted to delay implementation of WHTI until at least June 2009. The Senate is expected to follow and approve this.
A Means of Control
If there's still any question whether the Big Brother government was using these Draconian passports as control documents, this passport fiasco is stark proof.
No longer is a U.S. passport a document for free travel. It is a means for government to watch you and catalogue your every move in and out of the country.
The supposed objective of this bureaucratic nightmare is to catch terrorists. But the odds of achieving this objective by mandating a new passport initiative are slim at best. If fact, forcing millions of Americans to buy costly passports for visits to countries where previously a picture ID or driver's license was sufficient, falls into the stupid category of "do something" politics. However unreasonable, the government must appear to be "doing something."
As I wrote recently, the 9-11 terrorist attacks are being used by the U.S. government and many other nations, to tighten formerly easy visa rules for foreign travelers for reasons far beyond anti-terrorism. Soon all Americans and visitors to America may be forced to have digital, biometric passports with detailed personal and physical information readable by computers. The EU and the U.K. are adopting similar passport standards.
The U.S. and other governments want to use passports as the major means of proof of individual identity, both of their own citizens, and for visitors from abroad. And these high-tech passports, complete with electronic transmitter RFIDs, may contain everything from your DNA to your blood type and scans of your irises. Hooked to official computers, these biometric informers will track your every movement. And they also may be turned into national ID cards to record and control your domestic activity.
Break Free from Big Brother
This entire fiasco makes it clear that Americans should obtain a second passport. I dislike saying it, but the time has come when being identified as an American is not just a threat from foreign sources, but a threat from your own government.
I am the author of a book on the subject of dual citizenship and second passports, and as such, my advice is to consider obtaining a second passport now, while you still can. That second, non-U.S. document may allow you to break free from unreasonable government surveillance and snooping and to preserve what's left of your personal and financial privacy.
It's not yet too late - and I'll tell you exactly how to do it legally.
That's the way it looks from here,
BOB BAUMAN JD, Legal Counsel
EDITOR'S NOTE: Click here to read a Special American Security Alert from Bob Bauman.