Welcome to U.S.A, please swipe your passport

By NICOLA M. WHITE
Media General News Service
Published: June 13, 2008

So long, bulky passport book. Hello, plastic card.

For U.S. citizens hopping on cruise ships to the Caribbean or crossing to Canada or Mexico by car, the State Department has introduced a wallet-sized card that costs less than half the price of the traditional passport.

The catch: You can’t fly with it. But for folks more prone to take a cruise to the Bahamas than fly to Barcelona, this is the cheaper, smaller alternative to the full-size passport, officials say.

“It’s a great way to have proof of citizenship and identification and it’s the size of a credit card,” said Ryan Dooley, regional director of the Miami Passport Agency for the U.S. Department of State.

Plus, by June 1, 2009, all travelers visiting those nearby countries will be required to have a passport; a certified birth certificate will no longer be sufficient as proof of citizenship.

The passport card will be available next month.

The new passport card contains all the vital information featured in a standard passport, minus the page for cool stamps. It carries the cardholder’s photograph and a chip inside that holds travel information.

U.S. citizens are currently required to present some form of ID proving their American citizenship when they travel to and from border countries like Mexico, Canada and the islands in the Caribbean. While some travelers carry passports, others bring certified copies of birth certificates.

The problem is, there are thousands of types of valid birth certificates in the United States, Dooley said.

Critics have surfaced, saying the passport card doesn’t offer as much security as a regular passport. More than a dozen U.S. lawmakers in April sent a letter of concern to the State Department.

The State Department has tried to assuage those fears.

“It’s a very secure document,” Dooley said.

Costs for a certified birth certificate vary, but the cost of a passport card is $45 for an adult and $35 for a child. A regular passport costs $100 for an adult and $85 for a child.

The cruise industry doesn’t see requiring passports or passport cards for cruisers as having a negative impact on cruise ship travel, said Lanie Fagan, director of communications of the Cruise Lines International Association.

The organization’s research indicates that 72 percent of all cruise travelers carry passports anyway, she said.