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Bush may backtrack on rules for Mexico, Canada crossings

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Thursday that he has ordered a review of plans to tighten re-entry rules at the Mexican and Canadian borders, saying requiring passports for everyone could "disrupt the honest flow of traffic."

Bush said he had told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and officials from the Department of Homeland Security to see if more flexibility could be exercised.

He told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that this flexibility might include electronic fingerprint imaging "to serve as a so-called passport for daily traffic" to help speed up the process.

Americans would need passports to come home to the United States by 2008 under proposed guidelines announced recently as part of an effort to deter terrorists from entering the country.

The new rules apply to Americans traveling from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, the Caribbean and Panama. They also apply to citizens from those countries who want to enter the United States.

The new rules were called for in intelligence legislation that Congress passed last year.

An estimated 60-million Americans have passports - about 20 percent of the nation's population.

"When I first read that in the newspaper about the need to have passports, particularly the day crossings that take place, about a million for instance in the state of Texas, I said, "what's going on here?"' Bush said when asked about the new rules.

"I thought there was a better way to expedite the legal flow of traffic and people," he said.

"If people have to have a passport, it's going to disrupt the honest flow of traffic. I think there's some flexibility in the law, and that's what we're checking out right now," he said.

"On the larger scale, we've got a lot to do to enforce the border," he said.

Bush has proposed immigration-liberalization legislation that would establish a guest-worker program. But it has encountered difficulty in Congress, particularly among border-state Republicans.

Bush: No need for media to see "my personal stuff' During his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, President Bush said Thursday that the public should know as much as possible about government decision-making, but national security and personal privacy - including his - need to be protected.

"I believe in open government," Bush said. "I've always believed in open government. I don't e-mail, however. And there's a reason: I don't want you reading my personal stuff."

Bush once was a prolific e-mailer. But he signed off from cyberspace just before taking office in 2001 after lawyers told him that his presidential e-mail communications would be subject to legal and archival requirements.

"There's got to be a certain sense of privacy," Bush said. "You're entitled to how I make decisions and you're entitled to ask questions, which I answer. I don't think you're entitled to read my mail between my daughters and me."

[Last modified April 15, 2005, 00:50:05]