WASHINGTON, April 24 (UPI) -- Leaders of the $650 billion U.S. travel and tourism industry are supporting moves to push back the introduction of stricter document rules at the borders.
Under the legislatively mandated Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Canadian and U.S. citizens -- who can currently cross the border with just a driving license and birth certificate as proof of identity -- will be required to show a passport or some other form of secure document.
The change is currently scheduled to take effect at the end of 2006 for those entering by sea or air, and a year later for those entering by land.
But a bipartisan proposal by Senators Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, would push those deadlines back by 17 months.
Leaders of the U.S. travel and tourism industry, which employs seven million Americans, wrote to the senators last week expressing support for their proposal and praising their leadership.
While the industry "supports efforts to strengthen our border security," reads the letter, "we concur in your belief that the current [Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative] deadline will cause significant disruptions to cross-border travel and result in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of visitor spending."
The letter -- signed by Jonathan Tisch, chairman of the Travel Business Roundtable and Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association of America -- goes on to say that the existing deadlines "will also harm our relations with neighboring nations and important trade partners within the Western Hemisphere."
