Caribbean island snit over passports

World Travel Watch is reporting that some Caribbean island nations are considering banning US citizens without passports. This is, World Travel Watch says, in response to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, the State Department's proposed plan to implement the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

The WHTI requires "all travelers, U.S. citizens and foreign nationals alike, to present a passport or other secure document, or a combination of documents, that denote identity and citizenship when entering the United States." This means that US citizens returning from a trip anywhere in the Western Hemisphere would be required to show a secure document to get back home.

The issue is that the requirement of passports applies to air passengers in 2007 but not to cruise passengers until 2009; island nations who get the bulk of their tourism by air are threatening to require all Americans to show passports for admission to the island, putting cruise companies on the same footing as airlines.

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