Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Seventy Percent of Americans Can't Leave the Country, Clinton & Bush Unaware

Do you feel safer today? Let's hope so, since you're certainly less free to travel about the Northern Hemisphere. Beginning just after midnight, every American returning from Canada, Mexico, and various island paradises now have to flash a U.S. passport to get back in the country. For the 70 percent of citizens who don't have passports, that means a minimum four to six weeks waiting time (and probably more, given the new filing rush) to legally escape the national boundaries...Matt Welch

What passport? Rule surprises Bush, Clinton
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush admitted yesterday they had no idea the U.S. was implementing a new rule Monday that would require Canadians and Americans to have passports to cross the border. The former presidents were caught off guard during a 90-minute joint appearance in Toronto when moderator Frank McKenna, the former Canadian ambassador to the U.S., spoke about how Canadians feel slighted by the new rule. "I'll be frank with you Frank, I don't know about the passport issue," Bush told the crowd of 6,000. "I thought we were making good progress on using a driver's licence to cross the border. What happened to the E-Z card?" Clinton said he'd only heard about the passport requirement a day earlier, adding that in all likelihood most Americans were completely unaware of it as well...

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