Keeping Them Out, or Keeping Us In?

I just heard some vaguely disturbing news on the radio.  Apparently, in 2008, Americans will need a passport to get back in the country.  Yes, that's right.  If you leave the United States without a passport, you will not be allowed back in, even if you are an American citizen.

Then add to this the recent push to put RFID chips in passports.  Just who are the supposed terrorists these measures are supposed to stop, anyway?

What's next, barcode tattoos?

Comments

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Um, don't you already need a passport to get back in the US? I know flying back from England I ran into problems once when my passport had expired on the trip.

Oh wait, I looked at the article...you mean within continental North America. To be honest, I'm so used to travel to Europe and having to have a passport to come back that this doesn't really resonate with me. I kind of would rather require it for all travel than draw some kind of hierarchy of which countries are "okay" and which aren't.

I'd rather just make it easier for people to enter the US and get citizenship and thus have access to the passports to show. ;-)

[yami]

So if I wake up after a three-day drunken binge, and I'm in Tijuana... I might have my driver's license with me. But there's no way I'd have my passport!

Very few people are in a position to take impulse trips to Europe, but I know lots of people who randomly head to Canada or Mexico for the weekend. One of my geology classes did a field trip to Mexico that would've been a logistical nightmare under the new regulations (the gap between sorting out enrollment issues and going on the trip was not long enough to accomodate a passport application). And et cetera.

By virtue of geography, travel within North America is easier than travel to Europe, and so hassles at the border are more significant barriers to intracontinental movement. Whatever cost/benefit tradeoffs you make between security and ease of movement will have greater marginal impacts on trade and tourism with Canada and Mexico than with other countries. I think it's reasonable for our entry/re-entry policies to reflect this.

That said... New Kid, if someone gave me a choice between requiring passports but allowing everyone to get visas and citizenship, or not requiring passports and not allowing everyone in, I'd be with you all the way! Alas, that isn't a choice we really have at the moment.

[Rana]

I have to admit that I tend to be a bit libertarian when it comes to borders; I don't think that you can keep everyone "undesirable" out, and that even if you could, people would find other ways to cause trouble. Hell, this regulation would not have kept out Timothy McVeigh or any of the homegrown sympathizers of Al Qaeda.

In any case, it seems a bit odd that the burden of proof has been shifted to American citizens, the very people this legislation is presumably designed to protect. It's not going to keep non-nationals out -- as presumably anyone who can flash a driver's license has already passed sufficient hurdles to be "in country" (ditto with visas) -- and if the problem is the use of fraudulent drivers' licenses, it would make more sense to firm up that end than it would to create a new set of regulations.

I think the time and money would be better spent regulating cargoes, ports, nuclear power plants and chemical factories -- bigger bang for the buck without the heavy demands on policing manpower and the implications for civil liberties.

[yami]

Haven't they already floated proposals to establish national standards for driver's licenses, which went down in flames? Or am I confusing that with the proposals for a national ID card?

[Rana]

I'm not sure. It may be that people asked for national driver's license standards, but that it got shot down because of fear about a national ID card.

Of course, given that we're now tightening up security right and left with regard to individual personal travel, we're starting to get to a de facto version of a national ID as it is.

I find it interesting that the emphasis remainds on restricting _persons_ rather than protecting _structures_ (or restricting the "persons" of corporations, for that matter). In my cynical moments, I wonder if it's because human persons have a "nasty" tendency to have minds of their own, and that the powers that be are worried that we'll put them to use in ways that might benefit us and society, but not them.

(And, yes, I do know this is a lot to put on one rule change in customs. But it's part of a much larger philosophical position.)

[Rana]

Note, too, that the calls for national standards these days that actually have a chance of being enacted are far more frequently restrictive of civil liberties -- while calls for national standards regarding things like voting machines (which _enhance_ civil rights) are somehow verboten and will probably never get out of Congress.

[yami]

Well, from a Constitutional perspective, regulating voting machines and regulating the national borders are utterly different.

Yeah, persons vs. structures - I hadn't thought about it that way before! Chilling. But I think the incessant rhetorical focus on Bad Guys and Ye Olde Us/Þem does a better job of explaining it than hippiephobia.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

I guess my comment was more about how expectations about these kinds of documents get formed than really defending the policy per se - because I've had a passport since I was about a year old, and it doesn't occur to me that not everyone has one. Nor have I really lived anywhere where people were traveling to Canada/Mexico on the spur of the moment (I'm used to dealing with student trips to Europe so you just have to deal with the passport issue!). My husband actually does carry his passport around as ID on a regular basis (he's Canadian). I definitely agree that the policy in question isn't going to make anyone safer in the sense of preventing terrorism or anything like that, and that there's a hypocrisy about what we're willing to enforce nationally and not (Rana's comment re voting machines). I've just never emotionally got the concern about ID documents. (That's not to defend asking people to carrying them, just maybe to offer another perspective on how this legislation gets promoted.)

[Rana]

I understand what you're saying. I have to admit I tote my passport around with me most of the time, for no real reason other than that I figure I'm more likely to lose it if I set it down in a box somewhere at home -- and a certain delight in the idea that I could travel anywhere at a moment's notice should I wish to. So, RFID issues aside, the idea of a national ID in itself doesn't really bother me, at least as long as there's still space for people who don't want to have one.

It's more that I find the whole paranoia about "the border" misplaced. It's not like there is this actual impermeable barrier erected along the lines on the political maps, for one thing. For the other, even if there were, the notion that the world can be easily divided into safe "us" and dangerous "them" is (a) fallacious and (b) dangerous, in that it encourages complacency and also xenophobia (a la the Minuteman thing in Arizona right now).

I'd much rather spend time protecting truly vulnerable sites and working on reducing the circumstances that lead to terrorism than trying to play "guess the terrorist" or resorting to "round 'em all up and let God sort them out."

I'm far, far more likely to die in a car wreck than anything planned by Al Qaeda, let alone because some poor dude crossed the border to flip burgers and do stoop labor for less than minimum wage. And making it _harder_ for Americans to get out and see the world just seems like a bad idea.

[Rana]

(What a long winded way to say, yeah, I think we're all basically on the same page here.)

[DM]

While I also agree that this idea is counterproductive, and about as stupid as many of the others coming out of the Bush information, I wish the headlines had been a bit clearer. Being a frequent traveller to Europe, I am used to showing my passport upon reentry to this country.

Our open border with Canada should be source of pride for this country, and what we are allegedly defending in this so-called war against terrorism. Like the rest of you, I don't get how making us carry a passport helps. Maybe by 2008 we will have been almost freed from the control of this neo-fascist administration (yes, I hate using the "f"-word, but lately these nuts have pushed me over the edge), and we will have sanity on the verge of returning.

[Jill Smith]

Okay, now I have the South Park Movie's "Blame Canada" song in my head...

[Rana]

Hee. In a neat coincidence, I have "My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada" from Avenue Q rattling around in my head this morning.

[nicole]

wow...that would really suck to not be able to get back into ur country...i like going to canada...but a passport to get back home...wich is like right next to canada... is stupid...who the fuck makes these rules up?!

[Rana]

Nicole, that is an excellent question. We need more people to ask questions like that.