Border Officials Brace for Uptick in Passport Requests

The federal customs and border agency is readying for a surge in passport applications as it prepares to tighten identification requirements at the borders this Friday to comply with a post-September 11 security plan, federal officials said in New York yesterday. The officials, from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, said they were doing the best they could to ramp up capacity and avoid a major backlog as the next phase the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative goes into effect. But they also acknowledged that long waits for documents and long lines at the Mexican and Canadian borders ensued after the first phase began last year, when the agency received 50% more passport applications than usual.

Speaking yesterday at a news conference in the New York Passport Agency, the deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, Ann Barrett, sought to downplay concerns that new requirements that all American citizens show a passport to enter the country would lead to more delays.

"That hopefully will not happen again. Last year was, unfortunately, an aberration," Ms. Barrett said. "We believe we are ready." She said the agency has hired 800 new personnel to process the passports and opened a new factory in Arizona to make them.

The biggest change going into effect Friday is that border officials will no longer accept oral declarations of citizenship from people seeking to cross the border. Airline passengers also will have to carry a passport for all international travel under the new rules, which go into effect officially in June.

The New York field director for Customs and Border Protection, Leon Hayward, said the changes, approved by Congress in 2004, came amid concerns that terrorists or others intending to break the law might take advantage of the current oral declaration system.

Later in the day yesterday, New York immigration advocates launched their own information campaign to promote the economic contributions of immigrants and urge lawmakers to end an impasse over a stalled overhaul of the country's immigration system.

"Right now, politicians are shamelessly exploiting people's fears and concerns for short-term political gain," the director of the New York Immigration Coalition, Chung-Wha Hong, said. "Immigrants have become an easy scapegoat for everything that makes people nervous."