Administration announces new border screening initiatives
State Department plans to begin testing passport card by the end of the year.
The State and Homeland Security departments on Tuesday announced new efforts to transform how people are screened and approved for entering the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined the initiatives during a news conference in Washington.
No new requirements are being placed on people entering the country, a senior State Department official told reporters. "All we're trying to do is … make it easier to comply with the requirements that are already on the books," said the official, who asked to remain anonymous.
One of the initiatives involves creating a new card the size of a driver's license that can substitute as a passport for U.S. citizens. The new "passport card" will have an embedded computer chip and use radio frequency identification technology to transmit information to U.S. border personnel at ports of entry.
The State Department is developing the card to comply with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which requires all travelers to and from the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Bermuda, Panama and Canada to have documentation that establishes their identity and nationality.
Anyone wanting to enter the United States, including U.S. citizens, must present secure documents that denote citizenship and serve as proof of identity. U.S. citizens will be able to meet the requirement with either a machine-readable passport or the new passport card.
The State Department plans to start testing the passport card by the end of 2006, another official said.
"We support the concept of this new travel card, but it must be affordable, easy for travelers to obtain and should not delay passage through our ports of entry," said Randel Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits. "More than 400 million inspections occur at our nation's borders each year, with more than $500 billion in surface trade alone between the United States, Mexico and Canada."
Chertoff said DHS and State are also working to create a "global enrollment network" through which information from applicants could be entered once into a database and made available to all U.S. border personnel.
"The idea here is to get necessary information only one time from an applicant and then create a system … that allows both DHS and State Department officers to get access to that data to confirm a traveler's identify," Chertoff said. "Through this effort … we'll have the opportunity to transform our border management [by] decreasing wait times at ports of entry and allowing us to focus our resources on that minority of people who pose a threat."
Chertoff added that the administration also plans to establish a governmentwide process by the end of 2006 for travelers to correct inaccurate information contained in screening databases.
"The fact of the matter is mistakes do get made," he said. "We need to make sure we are giving travelers a simple way to redress them and get them fixed."