Canadians Fear Fallout Of U.S. Passport Rules

TORONTO, Jan. 12 -- Canadian and U.S. citizens are lining up for passports to meet tougher U.S. border rules that take effect this month, and Canadian authorities fear the rules will keep more Americans at home.

Starting Jan. 23, all airline passengers landing in the United States will have to carry a passport, not just the driver's license and birth certificate that can now be used by Canadians crossing the border and by U.S. citizens returning from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

The result has been brisk business at passport offices here and in the United States. Applications for passports are up 53 percent in the United States and 33 percent in Canada from the previous year.

"The passport offices are swamped. We're at capacity and running into delays," said Fabien Lengelle, a spokesman for Passport Canada in Gatineau, Quebec.

U.S authorities say the rush proves that the tighter border controls being instituted five years after Sept. 11, 2001, are working to improve security. The rules will be extended to the busy land borders with Canada and Mexico by June 1, 2009.

"The proof is in the numbers. Four years ago, we issued 7 million passports a year. This year, it will be 16 million," Frank Moss, deputy secretary of state for passport services, said from Washington on Friday.

"Americans are coming into compliance. We believe we will wind up with a more secure border, and that people on the planes are who they claim to be," he said. As more travelers have passports, "I can't believe the borders won't work more smoothly."

Canadian business executives are less optimistic, predicting confusion and delays. The $50 billion tourism industry is already struggling with a 28 percent drop in visitors from the United States over the past five years.

"This just aggravates the problem," said Christopher Jones, vice president of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. "We are already experiencing a precipitous drop in tourism. It's adding salt to the wound."

Fewer Americans are coming to Canada largely because of the increase in value of the Canadian dollar, which has erased cross-border shopping bargains. High gas prices, the 2003 epidemic of the viral illness SARS, increased security, confusion over the border rules and now the looming requirement for a passport have also hurt business, said Laurie Karson, who represents Canadian duty-free shops at the land borders.

"Tourism in general has suffered," Karson said. "We've been trying to educate our customers about getting a passport. Eventually, everyone is going to have to have a passport to travel."

Many airlines have launched similar education campaigns for passengers. The Nassau/Paradise Island Promotion Board has offered to refund to American tourists who come to the Bahama Islands the $97 passport fee if they need to get a passport. Some hotels in Jamaica are offering discounts to offset the fees.

Canadian tourism officials are worried the coming land border restrictions will stop the busy two-way traffic along the 3,145-mile land border. School trips will stop, they fear, bus journeys by senior citizens to Niagara Falls, Ontario, will dwindle, convention planners will bypass Canada, and communities that straddle the border will be split because many citizens don't want the bother or expense of getting a passport.

"An American family of two adults and two children would be required to pay at least $358 in fees for passports" and might decide against a vacation in, say, Niagara Falls, the tourism trade group said in written comments on the new rules.

An estimated 27 percent of U.S. citizens have passports, according to the State Department. In Canada, the rate is 40 percent. Critics have urged both countries to make their passports cheaper and easier to get. In Canada, an adult's passport costs the equivalent of $75 U.S. and is good for five years. A U.S. adult passport, costing about $22 more, is good for 10 years.

U.S. officials are still trying to come up with a cheaper, plastic card that could be used instead of a passport. They have proposed a wallet-size version embedded with a miniature radio-frequency chip that could bring up computerized information on a visitor quickly at the border.

Special correspondents Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City and Natalia Alexandrova in Toronto contributed to this report.