LETTER RE: WESTERN HEMISPHERE TRAVEL INITIATIVE

Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Secretaries Chertoff and Rice:

We are writing to express our concerns over the proposed new requirements for passport or alternative documents for travel to the United States by U.S. and Canadian citizens under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).

We strongly endorse the goal of strengthening North America's security and have been supportive of cooperative efforts by the United States and Canadian federal governments in this regard.

Our economies depend on an open and secure border between Canada and the United States. Your Departments are proposing to require passports and other secure documentation for entry into the United States starting as soon as December 31, 2006. It is important to ensure that the secure documentation requirements will not result in high levels of border congestion that would negatively affect our national and regional economies, most specifically in the areas of tourism, trucking, business and education travel, and trade in general. We are particularly concerned about the unintended impacts that these measures may have on remote and border communities, where people regularly cross the border to shop, see a doctor, go to school or visit family and friends, and where First Nation citizens have been exempt from passport requirements. For many, the costs for entire families of getting a passport or other secure documentation, if similarly priced, would not be affordable and would become a serious impediment to routine cross-border activity.

The proposed passport requirement will have an impact on business travel that could go well beyond the tourism and transport sectors to affect the growing trade in computer, management, information, technical and engineering services.

The security of documents such as passports ultimately rests on the security of foundation documents like birth certificates. More work is needed to make the improvement of these documents a priority in both countries. We should also cooperatively test the proposed secure documents in order to work out technical implementation issues and learn from such pilot stage testing before implementing this initiative across the length of the Canada-U.S. border. This would also provide both countries more time to help travelers, operators and border officials adjust to and prepare for change.

Yours sincerely,

Frank Murkowski
Governor, State of Alaska

Ralph Klein
Premier, Alberta

Gordon Campbell
Premier, British Columbia

Dennis Fentie
Premier, Yukon

Copies to:

Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs
David Wilkins, Ambassador of the United States of America to Canada
Frank McKenna, Ambassador of Canada to the United States of America
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Chairman, National Governors' Association
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Chair, Western Governors’ Association
Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Regulations and Rulings




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