New Border Initiatives Set to Begin on June 1
The new initiative is set to go into effect on June 1. U.S. citizens will also need passports or passport cards when traveling to the Bahamas and the Caribbean by air or sea.
"The plain fact of the matter is these are real borders, this is a real law and I am really charged with implementing it and I take that charge very seriously," Janet Napolitano said in a released statement.
The law was originally supposed to go into effect in January of 2008, but delays by the state department in issuing passports caused Congress to delay its implementation. Congress feared without the delay, it would have had a drastic impact on the flow of goods across the borders.
Napolitano and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently signed documents, however, stating that the June 1 deadline can be met.
"Preliminary data can always be wrong but I'm going to report to you anyway," Napolitano said. "[The data] indicates that roughly 80 percent of United States and Canadian citizens queried are already using WHTI-compliant documents. ... We are staffing up to make sure that if there is a surge right around the deadline time or right afterwards we can handle that surge so we don't get the passport backlog that occurred several years ago."
Napolitano also said that she plans to continue the 700-mile fence being constructed on the Southern border.
"Fencing should be used in certain places in combination with technology and manpower," she said. "In the future, we will look at fencing but only in conjunction with a system in certain designated places that make sense. Whether we need more fencing or not, I cannot say today ... That I haven't made the decision on."