Mexicans Get Catch-22 for Christmas

Many Mexican nationals are being blocked from traveling for Christmas under a new law limiting the documents they can use to board planes to fly to Mexico.

The law, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, prompted the Mexican government on Tuesday to open an emergency mini-consulate at John F. Kennedy International Airport to help Mexican nationals caught off guard by the new rules as they tried to travel during the holidays. Earlier this month, emergency consulates were opened at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and Los Angeles International Airport.

In a strongly worded press release in Spanish, the Mexican consulate of New York blamed "the problem" faced by Mexican immigrants trying to get home on the "decision of the American authorities not to permit boarding on direct flights to Mexico with identification that is accepted by Mexican immigration officials." It said the Mexican government and Mexican diplomats had not been consulted about the law.

The law, passed in 2004 as a part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, went into effect in January. It requires citizens of Mexico, Canada, and Bermuda to show a current passport and the visa they used to enter America before they can fly to points in the Western Hemisphere from U.S. cities. They can also show an emergency travel document issued by a consulate.

Most of the publicity surrounding the travel initiative this year has focused on the heightened security measures American citizens will be forced to endure as they travel back and forth across the borders, including new requirements for identification that may include enhanced driver's licenses. Meanwhile, Mexican officials said some airlines with flights to Mexico had not complied with the law until last month, when the American government began issuing fines.

With many Mexican citizens attempting to travel abroad for the holidays, consulates were soon flooded with calls from those who missed or canceled their flights because they were unaware of the new rules.

"There was a lot of misinformation," the consul for the protection department at the Mexican Consulate in Chicago, Ioana Navarrete, said. "A lot of people fly home for Christmas — the timing was not the best."

She said the mini-consulate at O'Hare has been issuing about 50 to 60 emergency travel documents a day since it opened three weeks ago. That number does not include people who came to apply for an emergency document at the main consulate office, where she said several staff members had been dedicated to issuing letters for panicked holiday travelers.

Some Mexican nationals with alien registration cards, which can be used in place of Mexican passports, were confused about the rules and also missed flights, she said.

"What you need to legally enter, you also need to legally depart, which is obviously a passport for the air environment," a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Kelly Klundt, said.

"In short, if you are in the country illegally, we did not facilitate your entry and we're not going to facilitate you leaving," she said.

Upon hearing of the travel law, the founder of the Queens-based Latin American Integration Center, Ana Maria Archila, said the policy seemed to be exacerbating the flaws in the immigration system, rather than fixing them.

"Obviously we have a whole big segment of the population that doesn't have any kind of documentation, and it feeds into the anxiety of being trapped — literally trapped," she said. "To the extent that the country continues not to deal with the issue, innocent people who can't travel home are going to be victims."

Before this year, according to consulate officials, Mexican nationals could fly home with only a voting card, a consulate card known as a matricula consular, a birth certificate, or an expired passport, as long as they were flying directly to Mexico.

To obtain an emergency travel document to comply with the new rules, Mexican nationals may still use those documents, according to Mexican officials, although they must also undergo a lengthy interview with a consular official.

The new initiative, passed unilaterally by Congress in 2004, was recommended by the 9/11 Commission, and is being implemented in two phases. By next year, foreign nationals attempting to exit the country by land or sea must also show a passport, visa, or a border-crossing card before they are allowed to leave. American nationals will have to show a passport or a photo identity card along with a birth certificate or other document proving their citizenship.

The troubles for Mexican nationals attempting to get home in the past two months come as a Government Accountability Office issued a report in November criticizing Customs and Border Protection for allowing thousands of people to enter the country without checking their documents.

El Diario/La Prensa first reported the opening of the JFK mini-consulate, citing a press release announcing that the office would be open at the airport until December 30.