If you happen to be lucky enough right now to be sitting by a lovely cerulean pool in Mexico, and you have to catch your flight home tonight, then you probably know you are OK to come back to the US with nothing but your drivers license. However, if you decide to stay a little longer, or if you’re leaving to Mexico or Jamaica or even Canada tomorrow, beware! you are going to need to have a passport to come back.
Yes, starting tomorrow, US citizens, including kids, who come back to this country from any nation in the Western Hemisphere, will have to have a passport. The same goes for Canadians and Bermudians coming to the US. The new rules are the result of terrorism guidelines put in place after 9/11 and, my guess, an effort to get more Americans to actually possess passports, especially since all new passports have hidden little tags in them that can be read by scanners.
In one sense, it seems like a crack down by Big Brother. The Federal government lording over us and keeping tabs on where we go. But in another sense, hey, it means more Americans might get passports and actually travel. And that’s a good thing. So if you’re heading out on a trip, even to Mexico, in the next week, you better have your passport.