Posted on 04/05/2005 4:57:38 PM PDT by Dog Gone
Mexico has never required a passport from Americans and US Customs hasn't either.
I've never had a passport and I started going to Mexico in the 1940s.
I have flown there commercially probably 20 times, driven there hundreds of times including in 1958 when I took a race car to Guadalahara for the State Fair, wound up selling it to Rodriguez after we beat him and then returning by air 5 weeks later, took the boat to Cabo for 7 months each year to marlin fish and flew back and forth commercial and flew my airplane in and out of Mexico for years.
If you had a passport customs would look at it but you would get back just as quickly without one or into Mexico for that matter.
Even when I totaled my airplane in Mexico in 1990 all I had to provide to the mexicans was my visa, pilots license, aircraft papers, and medical certificate, and insurance certificate. Those and my California drivers license is all I ever carried.
Exactly. They put the restrictions on their own citizens and not the foreign nationals
All I'm telling you is what I experienced. Isn't a visa basically the same thing as a passport? If not... what's the difference?
A visa is just a piece of paper that you fill out and a mexican customs agent stamps it at your first port of entry and you turn it in when you leave Mexico.
If you lose it it's easy to get another one, but costs depending on the cost of living in the area.
Had some guys ride down to Cabo one time and we turned all the papers, personal and ship over to an agent to take care of.
They wanted to leave and fly home before we got them back so I took the 2 that wanted to fly out to the "customs agent" in San Jose and new visas cost them $10. Two rented a car and drove to La Paz and the cost of living is higher there so the new visas cost them $15. Just fill them out and the guy stamps them and thats it.
will that include passports required across our unguarded borders?
Actually I see this as the morphing of the US Passport into the national ID card.
No worry here..........we'll NEVER go back to Mexico. Dang, I feel like I'm already there, every time I leave my house! :(
So...who goes to Mexico anymore?
Because if he wasn't a U.S. citizen, he would have crossed the U.S./Mexican border in the open desert instead of at a border crossing/checkpoint.
I can see it now, a U.S. citizen going to a U.S. prison for trying to come back into the country without a passport.
Took the words right off my keyboard. Thanks.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
I'm the one checking people at the ports of entry. Everyone is suspect.
to make my job easier, could you please describe a US Citizen to me, so I don't need to check passports.
Believe me, you won't see that, ever.
A passport is an identity document, while a visa is a permit to request to enter a country.
You are correct and it does speed things up.
That's BS.
Can you tell me a better way to identify a person?
And, I'll leave the country when I damn well please.
Nobody is stopping you from leaving the US.
Why don't they stick to what they do best in the name of national security, namely body cavity searches of 85 year old women?
Name one 85 year old women that has had a body cavity search.
The other reason this will never happen is because there are so many people living in Amercia as citizens who cannot produce proof that they were born here or were naturalized. I have friends in San Diego who were born in parts of Portugal where they didn't give out birth certificates, and then these guys immigrated to the US when they were young children. They were never naturalized, so they can't prove they're citizens and they don't even attempt to get passports. Then of course there are the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico who can't prove they're citizens, even if they were covered by Reagan's amnesty of 1986. So all these people who can't get passports would be effectively stuck inside America and that's not going to fly politically. These folks need to at least be able to drive over to Canada or Mexico even if they can't get a passport to fly to Europe. This will never be implemented for long.
"Americans will need passports to re-enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, Panama and Bermuda by 2008"
That's rich. I feel safer already.
It will be implemented and it won't cause much of a delay, if any at all.
The other reason this will never happen is because there are so many people living in Amercia as citizens who cannot produce proof that they were born here or were naturalized.
Anyone born or naturalized in the US can get proof.
I have friends in San Diego who were born in parts of Portugal where they didn't give out birth certificates, and then these guys immigrated to the US when they were young children. They were never naturalized, so they can't prove they're citizens and they don't even attempt to get passports.
If they were never naturalized, then they are not US citizens and can't get a US passport anyway. They should have Resident Alien cards and their Portugal passports. That's all they need.
Then of course there are the millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico who can't prove they're citizens, even if they were covered by Reagan's amnesty of 1986.
Duh, If they are illegal aliens, then they are obviously not citizens and can't get a US passport. If they were part of the Reagan amnesty, then they have the proper immigration documents and will have no problem crossing the border.
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