New security restrictions at border

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - A road trip to Canada got a little more complicated, starting Monday. You'll need a passport, enhanced license or NEXUS card to make the trip back home.

Picture identification requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative kicked in, requiring American travelers to show a passport, an enhanced drivers license, or a NEXUS card when coming back from Canada.

Akron traveler Jim Creed said, "It's a deterrent. Everything is thrown at you. You can't phony up your passport, you can't phony up NEXUS. It's there. Yes, I think it's a good idea."

But in the first days, Customs agents are still cutting travelers some slack.

United States Customs and Border Protection Chief Kevin Corsaro said, "If a traveler is non-compliant, and their only violation is they are non-compliant, we will issue a tear sheet explaining how to become compliant, and as long as we can establish citizenship and identity, they will be able to proceed from the primary line."

But American travelers who can't reasonably prove who they are could end up with a long wait in a processing area.

Travelers from New York City were adamant in their criticism of the new security measures and a loss of personal freedom.

New York traveler Peter Shore said, "For a false sense of security, and I think sometimes to a certain point, the people who are checking your security end up becoming almost like the people who you become afraid of."

Those of living along the border with Canada have known it was coming for years.

But for some folks living in America's heartland, it has not been much of an issue, until now. Coming to Buffalo for a convention, it took Jim Noble of Arkansas eight weeks to get his passport at the last minute.

Noble said, "I know the reason for it, but it seems silly to me, in a way. We have been neighbors for so long, it is just kind of silly for us to have to do this."

Customs officials told News 4 they used to have about eight thousand different forms of identification they had to check, then manually load the data into a computer. Now a scanner reads a chip or a bar code.