Border Law

Below is a section of the article by JAMES T. MADORE regarding the new border law (that Bush has already signed into law) that he claims he did not know about. If I were a lawmaker, then I would be quite confused at this point. So, we want travel to be safe, but we don't want to disrupt it? You signed this into law, but you weren't aware of what you were signing? WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said yesterday that he would push for flexibility in the application of a new border-crossing law that requires Americans, by 2008, to present a passport to re-enter the country after being in Canada, Mexico, Panama or the Caribbean. Bush criticized the new rule, adopted by Congress last year to combat terrorism, saying it could "disrupt the honest flow of traffic." He said he had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Homeland Security Department to examine whether new, quicker identification methods such as electronic fingerprint imaging could substitute for a passport. "I think there's some flexibility in the law," Bush told the American Society of Newspaper Editors, meeting in a hotel near the White House. He also acknowledged being unaware of the specifics of the measure until the recent spate of news reports, although he signed the legislation into law. "When I first read that in a newspaper about the need to have passports - particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for example in the state of Texas - I said, 'What's going on here?'" he said, responding to a question from the audience of about 450 journalists.