U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is pushing legislation to help local law enforcement agencies in border communities.

And even though her prime concern is the Mexican border, her proposal would include money for northern border communities too.

Whatcom County law enforcement agencies have complained for years about the extra costs they face because of the border.

Now we’ll have to see if a Republican senator’s proposal can get any bipartisan traction in a Democratic Congress.

The AP reports:

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press Writer

EL PASO, Texas (AP) - U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison wants Congress to give border-area police tens of millions of dollars to fight drug cartel-related crime and keep violence from Mexico’s ongoing cartel war from spilling into the United States.

Hutchison, a Texas Republican who recently announced plans to run for governor against fellow Republican Gov. Rick Perry, asked Congress on Wednesday to authorize $100 million a year until 2013. The Department of Justice-administered program would allow law enforcement agencies to upgrade equipment, hire new officers and pay overtime and other costs.

A recent Associated Press review showed that millions of dollars in grant money administered by the state went to counties with virtually no crime. Several million dollars was initially divided equally among Texas’s 16 border counties in 2005.

Critics have decried the spending as a misuse of public money.

Hutchison’s plan, according to a spokesman , would funnel money to agencies across the country that show they need it most.

“By creating a targeted and competitive grant program, we are ensuring that taxpayer dollars are allocated to where they are needed most to reduce crime and secure the border,” Hutchison spokesman Jeff Sadosky said.

Hutchison proposed dividing as much as $66 million a year among law enforcement agencies within 100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders, with the remainder going to police agencies in the interior of the country to combat “border-related criminal activity.”

Katherine Cesinger, a spokesman for Perry, said the state would welcome federal help, but has heard financial pledges before that have not materialized.

“We have heard for years that Washington is on the verge of sending adequate resources to secure our border but that has yet to happen,” Cesinger said. “Texas is eager for the federal government to fulfill its role in securing our international border but will continue to fill in the gaps with state resources until then.”

Steve McCraw, Texas’s director of homeland security, has defended Texas’ spending as necessary to prevent crime. He insists that violent crime statistics do not provide a complete picture of border crime, including information on drug and human smuggling cases handled by local agencies.

“We’re focused on the threat, based on vulnerability,” McCraw told the Associated Press last week.

He has also said the state’s crime data does not include drug and human smuggling offenses that may be handled by local authorities.

In a statement announcing the bill, Hutchison said the $500 million program was vital to ensure that the wave of violence overtaking some cities in Mexico in the last year doesn’t cross the border.

“Our border law enforcement personnel are under assault,” Hutchison said in the statement. “Powerful Mexican drug cartels threaten the safety of our communities and the l aw enforcement officials who protect us. This legislation is an important step toward securing our borders and preventing violence in Mexico from spreading into our country.”

Violence from the ongoing drug cartel war, a struggle for power and control of lucrative human and drug smuggling routes, killed at least 1,600 people last year and more than 100 so far this year in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. It has yet to directly spill over into the United States, according to law enforcement officials.

But police in cities across the country, including Phoenix and Atlanta, have reported an increasing number of kidnappings and home invasions thought to be related to Mexican drug cartel cells.

Luis Samudio, a Phoenix police officer and department spokesman, said his city has seen a growing number of violent drug crimes. Any additional funding would be helpful, he said.

“Common sense would say … it’s a benefit for not only the department , but the community,” Samudio said.

The northern border is on the short list of priorities for Janet Napolitano, former Arizona governor, as she takes over the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration.

This article from the Washington Times makes it sound as though the focus will continue to be on improved security, rather than on expediting commerce. At this point it’s nothing but words, of course. It will likely take a year or more to find out whether the new administration will do anything to help U.S.-Canada trade and tourism.

I’m not terribly optimistic. Once you get more than 60 miles away from the border, hardly anyone cares about border trade issues. And the Obama administration wants and needs to look tough on national security.

On the other hand, with the economy reeling, it now makes more sense than ever for the feds to do whatever they can to encourage economic growth. In the Midwest, border red tape is seen as one more obstacle for the North American auto industry, which has factories and suppliers on both sides of the border. Moves to help the Big Three at the border could have benefits in the Northwest too.

Stay tuned.

And thanks to Greg Boos for pointing out this article.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Blaine has named Supervisory Customs and Border Protection Officer Jonni Galarza to a new position: Passenger Service Manager.

The press release announcing this new position is a bit turgid, but it appears that Galarza will function as a sort of complaint desk for people who believe they did not get proper professional treatment from border inspectors.

Galarza may be contacted at (360) 332-6091, says the press release, which I post at the end, in its entirety, for your reading enjoyment.

If any of you good people find yourselves using this new service, I bet I’m not the only one who would enjoy hearing about it. Email me at john.stark@bellinghamherald.com, or just post something as a blog comment.

Thanks.

Here’s the press release:
CBP Creates New Position to Strengthen Customer Service

BLAINE, WASH — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has implemented a Passenger Service Manager program in Blaine, Washington to ensure the highest level of professionalism and increase customer service of arriving travelers.

The CBP Passenger Service Manager (PSM) will be highly visible and will be the primary point of contact to address concerns travelers may have about the inspection process. The PSM will collect and evaluate reports concerning professionalism and will promote public awareness of the CBP mission through distribution of public information bulletins, brochures and comment cards.

With responsibility for both the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway ports of entry, the Blaine PSM is Supervisory Customs and Border Protection Officer Jonni Galarza; she may be contacted at (360) 332-6091.

“CBP is continuously committed to providing a professional and welcoming atmosphere for all travelers crossing in to the United States,” said Blaine Service Port Director Margaret Fearon. “With the creation of the PSM, we can improve our professionalism posture in preparation for the upcoming 2009 World Police and Fire Games and 2010 Winter Olympics.”

The Model Ports Initiative was originally established in 2006 as part of the Rice-Chertoff Initiative and have been implemented at selected ports to include: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago (O’Hare), Dallas/Ft. Worth, Detroit, Dulles, Ft. Lauderdale, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, JFK, Las Vegas, Miami, Newark, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Juan, Sanford, and Seattle.

No, President Obama didn’t mention Canada during his inaugural address, but he did pledge to reexamine freedom and security issues.

In this commentary from the National Post entitled, “Mr. Obama, tear down that border,” Patrick Grady summons statistics to demonstrate the negative economic impact of post-9/11 border security measures, and expresses the hope that things will be better under Obama.

And like most advocates of border trade, he says he wants a border that is “more open and secure.” That sounds good, but perhaps we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can have both. What do you think?

He has been denied entry to Canada because of his 1969 radical activities that caused a bit of a headache for the Obama presidential campaign.

AP reports:

TORONTO (AP) - William Ayers, a former U.S. radical who featured prominently in Republican efforts to thwart President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign last year, has been denied entry to Canada.

The University of Toronto’s Centre for Urban Schooling issued a statement Monday saying Ayers was denied entry to Canada on Sunday night because of a 1969 conviction during an anti-war demonstration. Ayers, now a professor, was to deliver a speech at the center.

Forty years ago Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the early 1970s at the U.S. Capitol, a Pentagon restroom and New York City police headquarters.

Ayers was a fugitive for years. After he surrendered in 1980 the charges were dropped because of government misconduct, which included FBI break-ins, wiretaps and opening of mail.

Ayers became an issue in last year’s presidential race after Republican claims tha t Obama was “palling around with terrorists,” as Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin put it.

Obama had a very limited relationship with Ayers, who lived in the same Chicago neighborhood. They served together on the board of a charity, and in the mid-1990s when Obama first ran for office, Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session for Obama at his home.

Obama, a Democrat who will be sworn in as president Tuesday, has condemned Ayers’ radical activities. There’s no evidence the two ever were close friends or that Ayers advised Obama on policy. Ayers said he hardly knew Obama.

The Canadian center said it was surprised Ayers, a distinguished professor, community organizer and author, would be deemed a threat by Canadian border security.

Ayers was not allowed an opportunity to meet with his lawyer, the center said. A call to Ayers’ lawyer was not immediately returned.

Ayers told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper that he has traveled to Ca n ada more than a dozen times in the past.

“It seems very arbitrary,” he said. “The border agent said I had a conviction for a felony from 1969. I have several arrests for misdemeanors, but not for felonies.”

Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Anna Page said they couldn’t comment on the case because of privacy laws.

Here’s the scoop, relayed by Matt McAlvanah in the office of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray:

WASHINGTON – Freight carriers traveling in and out of Canada will experience less frustration from congestion and will be better able to deliver goods where and when the market demands, thanks to an agreement with Washington state that will provide more accurate and reliable travel information on border wait times, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters announced today.

The Cascade Gateway Project will provide border-crossing wait time and travel condition information to drivers and freight carriers. The project would use a variety of innovative technologies, including sensors, to provide pre-trip and en-route wait times on crossing the border to reduce congestion at four Washington state ports of entry, Peace Arch, Pacific Highway, Lynden and Sumas.

“Providing accurate travel information is an essential tool for fighting congestion. With accurate information, travelers and freight carriers will be able to choose the time and route that is most efficient and best meets their needs,” said Secretary Peters.

“With our economy faltering, it’s critical that goods and products are moving efficiently through our Northern Border crossings,” said Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Transportation Appropriations Committee. “This agreement takes innovative steps that will allow freight carriers and drivers to make informed decisions that will reduce congestion along the Northern Border.”

The project is part of the Department’s Transportation Border Congestion Relief Program which is designed to facilitate and accelerate transportation-related capacity and operational improvements at border crossings. Washington State’s Cascade program is one of the three projects included in the federal initiative.

“This project is a great example of how technology can be used to relieve congestion,” said Federal Highway Administrator Tom Madison.

Secretary Peters added that as part of the congestion relief program, the project will receive priority access, consistent with current law, to many of the Department’s assistance programs, including loans and other innovative financing mechanisms.

Canada is a major oil exporter. When the price of oil spiked in mid-2008, Canadian shoppers suddenly found themselves with a lot more buying power on their trips to Whatcom County.

Today, as global recession cuts global demand for fuel, the Canadian dollar has sagged back to more familiar territory, and has hit a one-month low today. Reuters reports.

It doesn’t look as though Canadian shoppers are going to be much help in boosting sagging retail trade statistics for Whatcom County this year.

In December 2008, 570,275 people crossed the U.S. border at Blaine, Lynden and Sumas, according to data compiled by Western Washington University’s Center for Economic and Business Research. That’s a sharp drop from the 710,166 recorded in December 2007. In December 2006, 842,000 people crossed at Blaine alone.

The CEBR has month-by-month border stats going all the way back to 1985. If big tables of numbers quicken your pulse, have your fun here.

The Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times reports that Sen. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama’s nominee as Secretary of State, may be favorably disposed toward steps to improve cross-border trade and tourism–despite her anti-NAFTA statements as a presidential candidate.

The paper’s correspondent, Marc Heller, notes that she is, after all, a border state senator. As such, she has been involved in efforts to curb the more burdensome features of tighter border security measures.

In this column from the Financial Post, columnist Diane Francis predicts that U.S.-Canada relations will improve under Obama, mostly because the two countries have so many interests in common.

This opinion piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail attempts a summing up of the George W. Bush years from a Canadian perspective.

Quick summary: The Bush Administration did a whole lot of things that irritated Canadians and hurt the Canadian economy. On the plus side–well, writer Lawrence Martin couldn’t find even one positive thing to say.

The column also makes passing reference to the anti-Canadian sins of past U.S. presidents. None of these sins were in the history texts I was required to study. Among other things: Grover Cleveland wanted to embargo all trade with Cananda, and Teddy Roosevelt threatened to send troops to the Alaska-Canada border to resolve a boundary dispute.

I hope this doesn’t challenge anyone’s cherished beliefs about Grover Cleveland.

Advocates of border fencing will love this story from the Los Angeles Times.

Environmentalists won’t love it as much.

This blog post from a Canadian customs lawyer is getting a lot of links elsewhere in the Canadian blogophere.

Attorney Cyndee Todgham Cherniak reports that a package sent to her Toronto office from the Cleveland-based Canada-United States Law Institute arrived with an official stamp notifying her that it had been opened and inspected. (She doesn’t say what was in the package.)

She expresses fears that Canadian authorities may be deliberately inspecting lawyers’ mail to gather evidence. She advises clients to use email or encrypted thumb drives to correspond with attorneys if that correspondence will be crossing the border.

“This should not happen in Canada,” she writes.

I like to post this stuff just because I know that some of you find it deeply disturbing.

It’s a press release from the National Guard. Long, not terribly clear or informative, and therefore ominous.

One more step toward the Amero.

Here’s more Amero information from one of my favorite websites, snopes.com.

The feds are hard at work on border fencing in and around El Paso, Texas–which was my home from 1973-1980.

Local environmentalists say the fence is disrupting the border ecosystem, and on Wednesday, Dec. 17, one woman managed to block fence construction as an environmental protest, before she was arrested on trespassing charges.

The El Paso Times reports.

The Washington Post is having an online discussion today about the merits of using unmanned drone aircraft on the Canadian border. The moderator starts out by wondering why the feds can spare a drone for North Dakota when they supposedly don’t have enough to protect troops in Afghanistan.

Click here if you want to weigh in. Feel free to weigh in on this blog too, of course–even if you just want to say hi.

Whenever the topic of the health care system comes up, somebody is sure to observe that we want to avoid “socialized medicine,” that bad thing they have in places like Canada.

Well, some U.S. doctors like the Canadian system just fine, and have moved to Canada for that reason. Among other things, they say the universal coverage system relieves them of the burden of dickering with their patients’ insurance companies.

The National Post reports.

At the Crosscut website, retired Western Washington University professor Floyd McKay reports on the (so far) limited economic impact of Vancouver Olympics activity on Washington state.

McKay also notes that massive improvements to the Peace Arch border crossing by both U.S. and Canadian agencies should pay dividends for years to come … even if the construction work on the U.S. side isn’t quite complete by 2010.

Read it here.

The Canadian International Council has issued a report calling on the U.S. and Canada to reexamine border regulations and security measures. The report says border red tape is making it more difficult for the economies of both countries to battle their way out of what seems to be an ever-deepening recession.

While the report calls on the United States to do some smoothing and streamlining, it also calls on Canada to take steps to tighten its own security systems, to allay U.S. suspicions that Canada can’t be trusted to keep dangerous people out.

Download the report at the Council’s website here. It’s called “A New Bridge for Old Allies.”

Read the Dow Jones Market Watch summary of the report here.

On the campaign trail in the industrial heartland, Barack Obama (and other Democrats) made noises about renegotiating or even pulling out of NAFTA, the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade agreement that is unpopular among some union workers.

But in this report from Bloomberg, via the Miami Herald, people in the know say they will be surprised if anything dramatic happens to NAFTA any time soon.

For one thing, Obama and the Congress just might have a few other pressing economic issues to attend to–like saving western civilization. Even union leaders and their staunchest Congressional allies are acknowledging that NAFTA is a lot less important than dealing with home foreclosures, auto industry collapse, and the trade relationship with China.

It turns out that Canadian political and business leaders already know and like Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is considered a top contender to head the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama.

Even though her state is on the other border, she has made trips to Canada to promote trade.

“She’s a real friend of Canada, very favourable toward Canada,” said Glenn Williamson, founder and director of the Canada Arizona Business Council. “She really gets the concept of trade with Canada.”

Five points if you already knew there was a Canada Arizona Business Council.

Read all about it here, at the National Post.