Shoring up the Borders
Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM, BY PAUL ROTHMAN
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff has waived certain legal requirements necessary to complete a 3-mile gap in the 14-mile-long fence along the San Diego-Mexico border. Meanwhile, New York Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton and Gov. George Pataki have separately asked the federal government to abandon its plan to require passports for crossing the Canadian border.
The fence along the southern border is known as the Border Infrastructure System (BIS). Construction has been delayed for years by environmental permitting issues and by litigation.
“Completing the Border Infrastructure System will strengthen our efforts to reduce illegal entry to the United States,” Chertoff says. “Congress provided us the authority to ensure this project is completed, and I intend to use it. Through this system — with advanced technology and additional personnel — we can make substantial progress in this section of our border.”
The construction of the BIS was planned for two phases. Phase I provided a continuous roadway system with security barriers and lighting within the middle nine miles of the project area. Phase II extends the Phase I roadway system through the Tijuana Valley Regional Park to the Pacific Ocean, and east to Otay Mountain.
The construction of Phase I resulted in reductions in illegal border crossing in the San Diego area. This first phase also reduced negative environmental impacts to the area, such as trails of garbage, destruction of vegetation, and trampling of sensitive lands. The remaining tasks of this phase were delayed by environmental permitting issues.
Once constructed, the 14-mile border barrier, designed to reduce illegal entry to the United States and improve border security, will include multiple physical layers of security, access roads to enable Border Patrol to speed response efforts, stadium-style lighting to deter border crossers and surveillance cameras to monitor incursion.
“It is not our policy to build physical barriers across the length of our borders. However, projects like this make sense in settings such as the urban environment around San Diego,” Chertoff says.
On the U.S.-Canadian border, however, tight security measures may curb trade and tourism, Clinton and Pataki worry. They have cited the soaring costs of new, biometrically-enhanced passports as the primary reason.
“If you're talking about a family with three kids, whatever the idea is, you're going to need to have something that is affordable, and passports are not affordable for many of the people that live along the border,” Clinton says.
Clinton, a Democrat, argues the passport could hamper everything from kids' hockey games to trade, threatening hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity on both sides of the border. In a meeting with Chertoff, she again pressed him to find a cheaper, simpler solution to protecting the border.
“I do fear that people in Washington think of only one border, namely the southern border, and they don't understand the geography, the family, and the close business connections” along the Canadian border, she says.
“I think there have to be alternatives,” says Pataki, a Republican. He then held up his New York driver's license, and noted it is imbedded with many safeguards and identifiers that could be scanned by border officials. “I think this should constitute a reasonable alternative, and there are others.”
By 2008, the government plans to require travelers crossing land borders to show a passport or one of four other secure documents to cross the border on land. A driver's license and a birth certificate are used by most who cross the Canadian border now.
But a driver's license doesn't meet the congressional standard: proof of identity and of citizenship, DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen says. He adds that DHS wants to expand its “trusted traveler” program now at some crossings. That provides a dedicated lane to travelers who have undergone background checks to quickly prove their identity.
A U.S. passport costs $97, and officials say they are working to come up with a cheaper, more widely used alternate document for U.S. citizens.
DHS has told North Dakota residents that the federal government is planning to develop other documents that are less costly and more effective than passports for frequent travelers and traders.
“It would be a further impediment to travel and trade,” said Quebec Premier Jean Charest, who met with Pataki at the third annual Quebec New York Economic Summit held in Albany. “We are each other's most important trading partner. The border must be part of the solution to enhance international trade, not a problem.”
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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.
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