Snap! - Have EDL, Will Travel
Effective June 1st (yesterday) 2009, in order to travel back and forth
across united states borders to and from Canada and Mexico, you need to have
a passport, or one of these gimmicky Enhanced Drivers Licenses. EDL’s are
only issued in New York, or Washington, and in some parts of Canada (border
states and such).
Part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, the EDL has a (easily
hackable, hence the foil sleeve they encourage you to store it in… a
crappy effort to save face in a billion dollar near blunder) RFID chip that
stores your traveling info, like citizenship and how many rugs you bring
back from IKEA (maybe).
It isn’t cheap either. A passport costs like $75 bucks (and its the only
approved id for air travel abroad), but I shelled out $80 for a renewal +
EDL upgrade on my NY license.
However, An EDL is great if you want the convienence of just an ID, and the
turnaround is much faster (10 days). If you live in Buffalo, head downtown
to the DMV in the Rath building, it’s brand new and pretty nice… but don’t
get too hopeful, you are still in Erie County. #snap
