Seeking Asylum from the Mainstream: What happened between the US and Canada on June 1?

Sunday, June 21, 2009

What happened between the US and Canada on June 1?

Starting June 1 America had a new requirement on the Canadian border: for passports or other approved identification to be shown at entry points. Indeed there has long been a large discrepancy between the type of border control on our southern border versus our northern border. However, Secretary Napolitano wants to change that discrepancy. But this process proves to be messy because a culture of free borders has been established. Take for example the twin towns of Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. The Economist reports, "in these towns, the line that looks so neat on maps is a messy business, running through a factory, a combined library and opera house, and a number of homes. In some cases it lies between the bedroom and a morning cup of tea."

The Economist reports:

Speaking to reporters before a two-day visit to Canada, on May 26th and 27th, Ms Napolitano said she wanted to “change the culture” along the 8,900km (5,500-mile) line to make it clear that “this is a real border.”

Her words are a clear sign that the Obama administration will not only uphold but enhance measures introduced since 2001, despite complaints from both sides of the border that they impede movements of all sorts, particularly trade in goods that was worth $1.6 billion a day in 2008. Ms Napolitano tried to assuage Canadian concerns during her visit, talking of the need to help trade, jobs and growth. But her department’s plans to install heat-detecting sensors along the border, put more surveillance drones in the sky and place additional cameras along the St Clair river in Michigan and the Upper Niagara in New York are taken by some frontier communities as a personal affront.

(Picture from Economist, May 28, 2009)

1 comment:

Ephraim Cruz, former Senior Border Patrol Agent, Tucson Sector, Douglas Station said...: The line has been drawn...in the pavement. I hope the United States government was not milked billions of dollars for this northern painted "border fence."

Seriously, though, I still remember patrolling the Canadian border and instantly thinking about the lack of fencing, any fencing; the trust accorded Canadians, although my detailed partner and I apprehended an American drug smuggler from Florida where we were assigned in Sweetgrass, Montana; and asking myself why almost all of the United State Border Patrol's resources are aligned along the Mexican Border or the front door when the Canadian Border or the back door is WIDE open.

By the way, my detail along the Canadian Border was ten short months after 9/11. My detailed partner and I were the only two agents working in the field at our assigned station in Sweetgrass most shifts. There were entire shifts where the station went unmanned at all. There were other shifts when the hand-full of agents assigned to that station were all not in the field because they were all at a training.

Disparity's clear!; June 23, 2009 at 6:00 PM