The Caribbean must not panic. That is a state that breeds confusion, muddled thinking and an incapacity for logical and coherent action.

The Caribbean must also be clear that it cannot be in the interest of the United States to promote instability in the Caribbean, which is what would happen if the region's most critical industry is destabilised and hundreds of thousands of people are thrown out of work. For instability on America's third border will increase the security threat to the United States, and that is counter to the stated intent of the passport project. This must be made plain to Washington.

In that regard, insisting that Americans - 80 per cent of whom do not have formal travel documents - flying to the Caribbean must use passports at U.S. borders on leaving and re-entering the country will be devastating to the region, especially in the context that implementation would be delayed to cruise passengers until June 2009. It is estimated that such a move would cost the Caribbean upwards of US$2.6 billion and about 200,000 jobs, about half of which would be in Jamaica.

Nor must we believe that the Americans are incapable of fashioning a sophisticated foreign policy, and that every action in Washington is a mindless gut response to some perceived slight. So the Americans understand that lack of support in the region for a specific initiative does not translate into the abandonment of old friendships and enduring alliances. The world, after all, is not that simple or simplistic.

Also, cruise shipping is unsustainable in the Caribbean in an environment of social and political decay, which is now the grave danger. If the cruise ship companies think otherwise, they must be made to see the light. The good thing, as was reported by this newspaper yesterday, is that Mickey Harrison, the chairman of Carnival Cruise Lines, wants to meet urgently with Caribbean tourism officials and the U.S. authorities to discuss the latest action by the U.S. Congress that would give the cruise companies an unfair advantage over their land-based tourism competitors, because of how Congress wants to implement its new passport requirements for Americans travelling abroad.

The bottom line, taking all the foregoing into account, is that the Caribbean has a strong and credible platform from which to challenge and convince the Americans that the region's land-based tourism should, at the very least, be placed on the same competitive footing as the cruise companies with regard to the passport issue.

The issue now is how to proceed. The proposal of John Issa, the Jamaican hotelier, makes sense. There is, indeed, an urgent need for "a united front in dealing with this potentially devastating state of affairs." The region was caught napping on this matter because of its failure to maintain an aggressive lobby in Washington to watch and promote its interests, including those relating to land-based tourism.

The cruise shipping sector, which contributes little more than 10 per cent to the tourism earnings of the Caribbean, understands and utilises the system. It is perhaps not surprising that the latest version of the passport regime was tacked on to another, even if related, bill as an eleventh hour move by supporters in Congress. The region faces a crisis, but it can't be paralysed by fear and restrictive geopolitical assumptions.