Canadians Take Notice, the U.S. Is Militarizing the Border

[marmar]

from the Toronto Star, via AlterNet:




Canadians Take Notice, the U.S. Is Militarizing the Border

By Tonda MacCharles, The Toronto Star. Posted May 26, 2009.

More troops, more searches, more surveilance drones. The U.S. is taking Canadians' pictures as they cross the border, and their biometrics.



DETROIT – About 50 feet before a car from Canada reaches the border inspection booth, the screenings begin.

A camera snaps your license plate.

An electronic card reader mounted on a yellow post scans your car for the presence of any radio-frequency ID cards inside. If there is an enhanced driver's license embedded with biometric information, its unique PIN number is read without you offering it.

The Customs and Border Protection computer connects with your province's database and in less than a second – .56 to be exact – your personal information is uploaded to a screen in the booth. A second camera snaps the driver's face.

Welcome to the United States of America.

If Canadians were under the impression that the Canada-loving U.S. President Barack Obama would heed pleas to loosen border controls to ease trade and traffic, there should no longer be any confusion. He has not.

Beginning June 1, you'd better have that passport ready. Or if you have an enhanced driver's licence from British Columbia, Manitoba or Quebec, make sure it's in your wallet, ready to show. (Ontario is now processing applications for the cards.) ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/140233/canadians_take_notice%2C_the_u.s._is_militarizing_the_border/

[Buzz Clik]

1. This article creates the impression that we have no reason to worry about border security.

It's the wrong impression.

[marmar]

2. It's absolute overkill.....As someone who crosses back and forth to Canada frequently.....

.....I can attest to that. When I returned home from Canada yesterday, the US border agents literally checked the trunks of every car coming thru the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, and we are talking several hundred vehicles at about 5 p.m., causing ridiculous and unnecessary delays.
Nobody suggests that there's no threat of terrorism. I am suggesting that it's overblown and being handled poorly. Going through on the Canadian side was no hassle at all.

[TrogL]

6. They've been doing that for decades

I used to live near Niagara Falls. Every once in awhile they'd decide to search every car just for the hell of it and keep people on their toes.

[Michigan-Arizona]

7. Coming back from Windsor to Detroit

Only one time we've ever had our car searched ( in the late 70's ) & that was only because dear hubby decided to get a little lippy with the agent.

[dipsydoodle]

3. No it doesn't

It accurately portrays paranoia.

[PFunk]

4. This will eventually change and things will eventually snap back to normal

Especially when both canadian trade and tourism screeches to a crawl because of this. How long will this happen is the question.

[sharp_stick]

5. They've been taking your plate picture

as you cross for years. I have no problems with them searching Provincial databases either, it's often the only way to spot somebody ineligible to cross the border and in the past it's taken a long time to do the search. I'm surprised that people on both sides of the border don't realize that it is a border, not just a line. It's still the most open international border on Earth with the now possible exception of the EU.

The Canadians should have the same equipment and access to State records but with the anemic funding given them by the Federal Government I would be surprised if they would have it available. At least the last few times I've driven up the Canadians had bullet proof vests, but they were still being paid the equivalent of a Target Associate.

Crossing the border is simple and pretty close to pain-free if you know how to do it and are prepared when you get to the booth. Almost anything that they can do to make it go faster is good by me. I'm sick of following an RV full of dummies that think it's hunky dory to cross, going either way, with one or two Drivers Licenses, no ID for the kids and no idea that they aren't allowed to bring those cases of scotch without declaring it.

[Igel]

8. Of course.

We have problems on our southern border--lots of illegal immigration, drug/gun smuggling, people smuggling, organized crime.

So we have some justification in some militarization. We can quibble over the exact amount.

However if we just focus on the southern border, well, it's racist. Those affected are Latinos, while the primarily Anglo-Canadian population to the north gets preferential treatment. That's a no-no because it's racist.

Of course, it's not racist. The problems are correlated with race, but independent of race. However, there's a school of thought that says that anything that disproportionately affects one ethnicity is assumed, on its face, to have racism as the underlying motivation. It's a school of thought that Napolitano and other bureaucrats before her bought into.

(As a silly example take my old grad department, Slavic. Blacks seldom study Slavic languages; they seldom go to grad school for Slavic literature or linguistics. Same can be said for Latinos or American Asians. However, the university kept accusing the faculty of being racist and not admitting blacks or Latinos, even though the dept. could point to the applications and say they admitted every "person of color" who applied. No racism, just applications that showed an ethnic bias.)