US passport cards allow travel to neighboring countries

For foreign visits limited to overland travel to Canada or Mexico or a sail by cruise ship to Bermuda or the Caribbean, American’s won’t need to spend $100 on a passport.

The Department of State has begun to issue wallet-sized passport cards, an ID that’s an alternative for land and sea travel to neighboring countries, and costing only $45.

Already, approximately 350,000 American citizens have applied for the new ID card. As many as 4 million additional applications are expected by June of 2009, when a new law goes into effect that requires a passport – or its equivalent – for all land and sea border crossings, such as with neighboring countries Canada and Mexico.

The passport card cannot be used at airports, where a passport is already required for flying to any destination outside the U.S.

The new card is also not valid for travel to Central or South America or any other overseas destination.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which is responsible for implementing the passport card program, was established after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. to make the country’s borders more secure.

Like passports, an embedded data chip in the new passport card allows border agents to pull up your file number on their computer terminals. The radio chip does not contain personal data that could be stolen.

www.state.gov