If you're traveling outside the U.S. this year, here are two pieces of advice: Get or renew your passport now, and think twice before planning a car trip to Mexico or Canada in June.
That's when we may see the biggest change ever for Western Hemisphere travel. Starting June 1 (unless Congress changes the deadline), Americans will need to show a passport, a passport card or other special document to return to the U.S. by land or sea from Mexico and Canada.
Despite assurances from agencies involved, there may be glitches and delays. Two years ago, the last big change in entry rules -- requiring a passport for air passengers returning from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda -- inspired a stampede of passport applications and created confusion at airports. Some travelers waited months for their passports, and others just stayed home.
Although passport demand has recently fallen along with wait times, and the State Department has ramped up staffing and facilities since 2007, the upcoming change will affect far more Americans than the 2007 rules change.
Just how many, though, is hard to quantify. Out of more than 1 million people, both U.S. and foreign citizens, who legally enter the U.S. each day, about three-fourths arrive by land from Mexico or Canada, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
But the agency doesn't keep track of how many are repeat crossers or use documents that won't be accepted after June 1, said spokeswoman Kelly Ivahnenko. So it can't predict how many Americans will need to order a passport or passport card by June.
What to do to be prepared? First, study up. Second, do some planning.
A little history: In 2004, Congress, reacting to issues raised by the Sept. 11 attacks, decided to plug a potential hole in border security that had allowed Americans to present various types of identification, such as driver's licenses, birth certificates or sometimes nothing, when reentering the U.S. from certain neighbor countries.
It passed a law that, when fully implemented, would require citizens of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Caribbean countries and Bermuda to show passports or other secure documents that established identity and nationality in order to enter the U.S. from these nearby nations.
What followed were years of increasingly complicated rules, shifting deadlines and the Great Passport Meltdown of 2007, in which wait times for passports doubled to 12 weeks or more.
