BELLINGHAM — Tighter border-crossing regulations could cause serious harm to both the U.S. and Canadian economies, area business people and public officials say.
“If changes in documentation are not done right, it has a very real potential to undermine our economies,”‘ said Jeffrey Parker, consul general of Canada for Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.
Parker participated in a roundtable discussion Friday at Western Washington University on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.
The roundtable included Port Angeles Mayor Karen Rogers.
Canadians and Americans currently need a birth certificate or driver’s license to cross the border.
Under the plan announced by the United States in April, people who enter the country by air or sea from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Bermuda and South and Central America will have to show a passport or one of four other secure documents by Dec. 31, 2006.
Travelers crossing land borders, namely from Mexico and Canada, will have to comply with the rules by Dec. 31, 2007.
Business groups have been criticizing the plan for months, but Department of Homeland Security spokesmen have said the timeline was set by Congress.
Rogers said passport requirements would hurt the economy without making anyone safer.
She said that when Ahmed Ressam was arrested with a car trunk full of bomb-making equipment in Port Angeles in 1999, coming in from Victoria on the MV Coho ferry, he was carrying a valid Canadian passport.
Sharp work by border inspectors, not red tape, stopped him, Rogers said.