PORT ANGELES — If you’re in Victoria after June 1 and you lose your passport or other high-tech, border-crossing document, officials will let you come home anyway — at least for the time being.
“If you’re not compliant, you’re still going to get let into the United States,” Daniel Horsman, port director for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce at a luncheon Monday.
“The vast majority of people are going to get let into the States . . . They’re not going to make you go someplace else, talk to somebody and talk your way into the United States.”
New requirements for entering the U.S. from Canada by land or sea take effect June 1.
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative will require U.S. and Canadian travelers 16 and older to present a passport or other special document that verifies citizenship.
No longer with a regular driver’s license and birth certificate suffice.
Slow transition
“They’re going to slowly work this thing in and make it work,” Horsman said during a straightforward presentation at the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant.
“It has to be reasonable . . . . Here in Port Angeles, I can assure you that common sense will prevail.”
Valid documents will be:
• A passport book.
• A passport card, newly created for crossing only from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean under the new rules.
• An enhanced Washington state driver’s license
• A “trusted traveler” document such as a Nexus card.
• An “enhanced” Washington state driver’s license, embedded with citizenship identification.
Passport the best
A passport book is still the “be all, end all document,” for border crossing, Horsman said.
The passport requirements went into effect for air travel from Canada in January 2007.
“I think it was relatively seamless when it went into effect there, and I think it will be seamless here,” Horsman said.
Children younger than 16 can present a birth certificate to move through the line with their passport-carrying parents.
Military cards and Merchant Mariner documents are still valid.
The switch to the standardized requirements has the potential to speed the border-crossing experience considerably, Horsman said, especially at busy land ports of entry like Blaine.
Horsman described the sometimes-chaotic current process, in which officials have to sift though several different forms of identification and match them to picture IDs.
“You’re putting together a puzzle to start with,” he said.
“You haven’t even started your inspection yet.”
Horsman doesn’t anticipate much confusion with the transition.
Of the nearly 1 million people who enter the U.S. by land or sea every day, more than 80 percent of U.S. and Canadian travelers are already compliant with the new requirements, he said.
“It’s a little tricky forcing a U.S. citizen to have a particular document to re-enter his own country,” Horsman added.
“What are you going to do if they don’t have it? Not a lot, believe me. You’re just going to ask them to get it next time. That’s about all you can do.
“You can’t keep a U.S. citizen out of his own country. It’s not going to happen. It’s certainly not going to happen on my watch.”
Homeland Security
Customs and Border Protection is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is responsible for clearing people at designated ports of entry such as the MV Coho ferry terminal in Port Angeles.
The Border Patrol is a separate branch of Customs and Border Protection. It is responsible for patrolling areas between ports of entry and inland.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officers are also part of Homeland Security.
Horsman began his 17-year career at the crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, at San Ysidro, Calif. — the world’s busiest border gateway.
More recently, he worked at the Canadian border near Oroville in north-central Washington.
He told the chamber that he was happy to land in Port Angeles for its beauty and strong sense of community.
For information on the new border crossing requirements, visit www.cbp.gov or www.getyouhome.org.
________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
