Excerpts From the Daily Press Briefing Pertaining to Western Hemisphere Affairs Full Briefing
MR. KELLY: Listen, let me first of all say that we have a special guest star today to begin the briefing. Brenda Sprague --
MS. SPRAGUE: That’s right.
MR. KELLY: -- who is Deputy Assistant Secretary in our Bureau of Consular Affairs, head of the passport part of our operations in Consular Affairs. And our
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative begins on Monday.
So, Brenda, could you make some introductory remarks? And she’ll be glad to take some questions, and then I’ll be glad to take questions afterwards.
MS. SPRAGUE: Good – I guess, it’s good afternoon by now. Implementation of the land and sea border crossing requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, better known as WHTI, begins Monday, June 1
st. This is the day that Americans will need WHTI-compliant documents in order to cross land and sea borders into the United States. WHTI-compliant documents verify both the identity and citizenship of the individual in a single document, which must be presented to the border official.
The WHTI air requirement went into effect in January of 2007. In the following months, there was an unprecedented surge in demand for WHTI-compliant documents, particularly the U.S. passport. The State Department was unable to keep abreast of the workload, resulting in significant inconvenience for the American traveling public. As a result, the scheduled implementation of the land-sea border crossing documentation requirements were delayed until June 1
st, 2009.
We have been preparing for this day for some time and have made significant investments in personnel, equipment and facilities. We have communicated information about this change through an extensive outreach campaign by the Department of State and by our colleagues at Homeland Security. We are ready. The WHTI-compliant documents include: a passport, a passport card, a trusted traveler card, or an enhanced driver’s license. The passport book is valid for all international travel: air, land, and sea. The passport card, trusted traveler card, and enhanced driver’s licenses are only valid for land and sea border crossings between the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, and Bermuda.
While passport issuance for this year is down slightly from the previous two years, overall, the percentage of Americans with valid passports has increased significantly since 2005, going from 20 percent at that time, to over 30 percent today. We anticipate that we will issue approximately 13 million passports this year, which is significantly less than the 18.5 million passports we issued in 2007, and the 16 million passports in 2008.
Children under the age of 16 do not require WHTI-compliant documents. Individuals 18 and under who are traveling as part of a youth group, such as a sports team, are not required to present WHTI-compliant documents. I encourage you to visit the DHS website getyouhome.gov, and our own website travel.state.gov. I’d be happy to take any questions that you have.
QUESTION: What’s the difference between a passport card, a trusted traveler card and the enhanced driver’s license?
MS. SPRAGUE: Passport card is issued by the Department of State. It has the same – adjudicated to the same high standards as the U.S. passport. The other two cards are issued according to standards issued by Department of Homeland Security, the trusted traveler card, and enhanced driver’s licenses are issued by the states in accordance with their own standards. So the federal standard for citizenship and identification is represented by the passport card. The WHTI documents that are issued by Homeland Security have their own standards and complications and requirements that are different from ours, and the enhanced driver’s licenses are adjudicated according to state standards.
QUESTION: And if I’m sort of an ordinary citizen, how do I figure out which – which one will suit my needs if I go back and forth to – I don’t know – Canada twice a week or –
MS. SPRAGUE: If you travel both by land and sea, or if you have any plans in the next ten years of going somewhere internationally other than the Western Hemisphere, then I’d invest in the book. It’s the premier document. If you routinely go across the border and you have no intention of – by land and you have absolutely no intention of flying anywhere, then the passport book – passport card is a very cost-effective alternative, very durable, very portable.
Enhanced driver’s licenses, as compared to passport cards, are – they also let you drive, which is good, and they’re only good usually for shorter periods of time. The enhanced – the secure traveler cards that are issued by WHTI are for shorter durations and have other requirements; however, they really do – if you’re traveling through all the time, they can make a significant difference at the borders. They do have separate lanes and you can get through a lot faster.
QUESTION: Which states have the acceptable enhanced driver’s license?
MS. SPRAGUE: I’m going to miss one, but I think it’s Vermont, New York, Washington state, and Michigan is in the process of rolling theirs out.
QUESTION: And what is the difference between a driver license and an enhanced driver license?
MS. SPRAGUE: The enhanced driver’s license also indicates your citizenship, and it meets the standards of the REAL ID Act in terms of verifying the data that has been presented to the driver’s license office. Most states have not chosen to comply with REAL ID.
Yes.
QUESTION: Well, I understand that it would soon be a state issue. But why are the only states that have the enhanced driver’s licenses on the Canadian border, not on the Mexican border?
MS. SPRAGUE: It’s a cost factor more than anything else. It’s extremely expensive for a state to roll out a program like this, and the southern border states just chose not to do so.
QUESTION: And speaking of cost factors, you said you’ve invested a lot in personnel and other things over the last few years in getting to where you are today. How much has all this cost?
MS. SPRAGUE: I don’t have an exact dollar figure because we’re fee-based. But I can tell you that we have doubled the number of passport adjudicators. We went from about 700 to over 1,300. We added a second book print facility. We have added – or are in the process of adding four additional passport agencies, and with our stimulus money we’re going to be adding an additional five agencies plus we’re going to be opening counters at some of our facilities that don’t have counters right now.
QUESTION: But are we talking a hundred million or a billion or –
MS. SPRAGUE: Oh, it’s certainly not costing a hundred --
QUESTION: Well, I don’t know. I mean –
MS. SPRAGUE: I don’t either, to tell you the truth. I’ll have to take that question.
QUESTION: Okay.
QUESTION: What’s the average wait time now for a passport?
MS. SPRAGUE: Four to six weeks for a routine, two to three on an expedite for which you pay the extra $60. We try to beat those, but it’s best that people give themselves plenty of time.
QUESTION: And how many people have gotten passport cards?
MS. SPRAGUE: We’re over a million. We’re working on a million two.
QUESTION: And do you actually have the number of the – the pace of passport issuance, the full passport book, so far this year?
MS. SPRAGUE: We are just over seven million coming – we’re more than just over, we’re working on eight million.
QUESTION: And do you remember what the previous two years were?
MS. SPRAGUE: About this time – no, I couldn’t give you the exact --
QUESTION: Or total. Or total.
MS. SPRAGUE: Total – in 2006, at this – we – the total for the year was 16 million. I don’t think there’s any way we’re going to reach that. And the year before that, which was 2007, was 18.5 million. And a good number of those were issued after the 1
st of June because that’s when we got – finally we were able to break loose the logjam.
QUESTION: Right. You said that ’06 was 16 million –
MS. SPRAGUE: ’07.
QUESTION: But you meant ’08, correct?
MS. SPRAGUE: If I said ’06, I made a mistake. It was ’08 is the 16 million.
QUESTION: And ’07 was 18.5?
MS. SPRAGUE: 18.5.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. SPRAGUE: Okay.
MR. KELLY: Other questions?
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR. KELLY: Okay. Thanks a lot, Brenda.
MS. SPRAGUE: Thank you very much.
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QUESTION: Yes. Next week on Tuesday in Honduras is this OAS meeting. Can you tell me the position that the United States is going to have concerning the possibility of
Cuba joining the OAS?
MR. KELLY: Mm-hmm. The Secretary, as you know, is planning to go to Honduras. On the issue of Cuba joining the OAS, I mean, we would welcome the day when Cuba is able to join the OAS. But our position is very clear on that. As the Secretary said a few weeks ago, it’s really up to Cuba whether or not they join the OAS. They have to take certain concrete steps in order to meet democratic principles that define OAS membership. And those steps they need to take are clear: they have to make more moves towards a – toward democratic pluralism; they have to release political prisoners and respect fundamental freedoms.
QUESTION: Well, there is still some speculation that the United States would be willing to have a kind of intermediate agreement so that Cuba would enter conditionally, provided --
MR. KELLY: Yeah. Well, I’m new up here, but I know that I’m not going to talk about anything that’s speculation, so I’m not going to comment on that.
