Canadian diplomat says new U.S. border security measures are onerous 

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Canada’s top representative in New England came to Vermont on Wednesday to plead for help in opposing tough new border security measures planned by Washington on the U.S.-Canadian border.

Stan Keyes, the consul general at the Canadian Consulate in Boston, made his pitch at a luncheon with members of the general affairs committees of the state House of Representatives and Senate, where he had a sympathetic audience.

Keyes sought to emphasize Vermont and the United States’ long-standing trade relationship with Canada, and argued that both international trade and tourism could be severely hurt if the U.S. administration pushes ahead with its plan.

Rules crafted by the State and Homeland Security departments, designed to implement legislation passed by Congress in 2004, will require passports for air and sea travel between Canada and the U.S. and between other Western Hemisphere countries and the U.S. They take effect at the end of this year.

Effective Dec. 31, 2007, crossing land borders into the U.S. also will require a passport or a specially designed “PASS card,” which would not be usable at air or seaports. New rules designed to bring more scrutiny to truck traffic and other commerce also are being developed, said Jarrod Agen, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington.

The new rules will “seriously impede some $1.1 billion in trade and hundreds of thousands of travellers who cross the U.S.-Canadian border every day,” Keyes said.

Keyes said Canada’s desire for a go-slow approach to the new rules had won support from governors around New England and in other border states, and that several state legislatures were working on or had passed resolutions containing the same message.

He said he hoped Vermont legislators would pass a currently pending joint resolution that would put them on record as opposing the new rules.

In an earlier comment to a post I talked about something like this, and sure enough here you go. What this ambassador fails to understand is that the US wants to do this to the entire world. The fact it does a lot of trade with us is irrelevant, the fact that many businesses and families rely on the (perfectly reasonable) easy border-cross is meaningless. I think it’s quite clear the US simply wishes to make it very difficult for any travel over its borders, in either direction, because it wants to establish some kind of psychotic police state (we’ve talked about that ad nauseum…). In this case, it really doesn’t matter if everyone involved “opposes the new rules.” Everyone benefits from how things are right now. I know I benefit from it in some way, and would even more if for some (ludicrous) reason I wanted to cross the border. That doesn’t matter. Homeland Security is not about making advantageous decisions… can’t people see what its real agenda actually is? Sheesh.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 6:07 am and is filed under Insanity, Politricks.