It’s America Dammit! No passport required

Got your passport?  Good. But you don’t need one. No, wait. You do. No you don’t. Do too! Do not! Man, it’s amazing how something so simple got so repeatedly mis-reported so much! Although as everything post-9/11, the new passport requirements are, well confusing. YOU DO NOT NEED A PASSPORT TO RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES FROM THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS. (Unless you’re not an American, in which case we reserve the right to ask you some really stupid questions about why you don’t look and talk like us.)

Now…you’d think the USVI tourism folks would be making huge waves over this. Quoted in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, USVI Dept. of Tourism Director Henry de Lagarde. “We didn’t want to come out and rub it in their nose, so we did nothing,” referring to the rest of the Caribbean islands that are affected by the new rules. We did nothing?  At least hotels are. The USVI Hotel and Tourism Association has promotions going that can knock 20% off some lodging, including deals at the Westin.  Check out the Assocation’s deals here. Oh. And get a passport anyway. Your kids will think you’re cool. State Department’s official passport site here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 2:32 pm and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.