Rep. Louise Slaughter (D.-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House rules committee, takes credit for delaying WHTI. Slaughter told the Buffalo-based Business Review in December, “We have put it off [WHTI] until 2009. We want a new administration and certainly want a new director of Homeland Security.” She also expressed doubt the measures would enhance security because “You’d have to be a pretty stupid terrorist to wait in line just to cross one of the bridges.”
When asked about the likelihood of the next administration supporting WHTI, Chertoff said, “If a future Congress and a future administration decides they want to go back to the same kinds of old, flimsy documentation then they are going to take the responsibility for the consequences, as unhappy as those consequences may be.”
Chertoff said he was able to end the practice of oral declarations and reducing the list of acceptable documents by making “just a tweak in the instruction” DHS gives to Border Patrol and border inspectors.
Full WHTI standards would require persons traveling by air or sea between the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean Basin, Bermuda and Central and South American to carry a passport. To cross a land border, however, a security enhanced-driver’s license or State Department issued Pass card would be accepted. .
“The best thing in the world would be for the Congress to allow us to implement this before June 2009,” Chertoff said. “But, to be honest with you, at this point if they would just let us do what we are doing now, we at least make 80 percent progress in dealing with some of our problems at the border.”
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