As of January 23, 2007, under the United States Governments' Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), passports will be required for all AIR Travel between Canada and the United States, including Canadian citizens, entering or re-entering the United States. This initiative includes all Air travel to or from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda .
What gets me about this is that it's not news... yet so many people are now faced with cancelling trips because they waited until 6 weeks before their trip and didn't think that maybe, just possibly, there might be higher volumes of passport apps to process leading to delays ; : Passport Canada are currently saying delays of 5 - 20 days (that's business days) on top of the regular 5 - 20 day processing. ; That's up to 8 weeks, folks! ; And that's if everything's in order and they don't reject your pictures! Luckily, I'm a little bit paranoid and didn't like travelling to the U.S. without a passport even when we could *laugh*
I was going to say the same thing Treelo........we have known for what, over a year that the US was bringing this into regulation? ; It doesn't make sense to me why people would wait until the last minute. ; I can understand for those that don't have travel plans and something unexpected comes up (have to travel for a funeral or something) but for anyone who actually planned a trip, it boggles my mind..........
Alot of people are good at putting thing off to the last minute. I posted this because I heard one major Canadian chain store has been taking 6000-8000 passports a week since December. I'm with you Treelo I have always had a passport when travelling to the US I just found it easier.
We were out at the in-laws' place the week after Christmas and were listening to the conversation between my in-laws, DH's grandmother, his aunt, his brother and his sister-in-law... it's amazing how inconsistant the different photo places are, still. ; Some of them were told they had to remove their glasses, some weren't... one was told that the glasses could stay on 'cuz they're anti-glare (for interest sake... all the glasses in the family are anti-glare). ; All of these people are travelling between last week and the end of Feb.... 4 of them needed to get passports for their trip.... of those 4, none of them had sent in their applications as of December 30th for travel in February. ; I have a feeling they might end up changing their travel plans, since it's quite likely at least one application will be sent back by Ottawa because of the pictures.
My wife and I both have ours, but we have not gotten them for the kids yet. ; We always drive across the border... and even if we were to fly to WDW in the next couple of years it would be out of Syracuse or Rochester. We'll get the kids' passports next year when the mayhem has died out.
