The Canadian border and Janet Napolitano

Kelly McParland
March 27, 2009, 2:05 PM

Anyone who hoped the arrival of the Obama administration would mean the end of Washington's ludicrous fears about the Canadian border has had their delusions firmly corrected by Janet Napolitano, the new secretary of homeland security.

Napolitan said this week a border review by her department showed ongoing concerns about Canadian risk assessments and "very real" differences on immigration and visa policy.

In an address at the Brookings Institution she added:

"One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border."

"In other words, we shouldn't go light on one and heavy on the other ... I don't mention this to suggest that everyone in this room will agree with that, I mention it to suggest it's something I have to deal with, and so I ask for your sympathy."

Of course. Because everyone can see conditions along the Canadian border and the Mexican border are exactly the same.

Mexico is a horrifically violent country currently in the grip of a civil war between competing drug lords. John Culberson, a Republican congressman from Texas, told a House of Representatives hearing that "Mexico is more dangerous than Iraq ... There were more deaths in Mexico than there were in Iraq."

He was challenged by David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, who argued there were 7,000 civilian deaths in Iraq last year, compared to only 6,000 in Mexico. Well, I guess that's OK then, except in Iraq the numbers are going down, while in Mexico they're going up.

The Mexican border is so porous the U.S. is building a barrier from Texas to the Pacific to try and stem the flood of illegal immigrants. It's so dangerous President Barack Obama is sending hundreds more federal agents, hoping they can slow the violence spilling over into the U.S. In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, 1,800 people were killed in 2008. There were 366 abductions in Phoenix, largely linked to Mexican human smugglers and narcotics gangs. Recent U.S. intelligence assessments warn Mexico risks becoming a violence-ridden "failed state" similar to Pakistan.

A British reporter, on a recent visit to Tijuana, bordering San Diego, wrote:

"The average is 120 murders a month and people talk of little else. On March 6 there were 12 murders, with eight the day before, and nine the day before that.

"Beheadings have become commonplace. Kidnappingis out of control, the victims held in cages all over the city. Mutilated bodies, often showing evidence of torture, are dumped in the streets with jeering, bragging notes pinned to them. There have been public gun battles involving .50-calibre machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Gee that sure sounds like Canada eh? I mean, I was down in Windsor the other day, and, like, I saw a guy who drove right through a yellow light.

Napolitano clearly hasn't got a clue what goes on at the Canadian border. A former Arizona governor who has spent her life in that state and New Mexico, she acknowledges she's "never actually spent much time on the Canadian border," but sure hopes to visit. Until then, she's commissioned a study.

The study will find that while Mexico exports drugs and illegals, Canada ships food, technology and two-by-fours. Canada wants freer trade with the U.S.; Mexico is engaged in an escalating tariff war, raising duties on 90 U.S. products after the U.S. cancelled a NAFTA-related cross-border trucking program.

Canada hunts down and prosecutes terrorists and their sympathizers. "Threats to the United States are threats to Canada," Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared as he stood next to Mr. Obama during the President's recent visit to Ottawa. "There is no such thing as a threat to the national security of the United States, which does not represent a direct threat to this country."

When the U.S. demanded everyone crossing the border carry a passport, Canada complied and is prepared for the June 1 deadline. The U.S. isn't. Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from Buffalo -- home of some of the busiest border crossings in the country -- is so concerned about the poor state of U.S. preparations she's trying to push back the deadline.

"There will be pure chaos," she warned this week.

So just exactly what is it in these two pictures that convinces Ms. Napolitano the two borders deserve equal treatment? Perhaps she should begin reading some of Mr. Obama's speeches, in which he decries the Bush administration's ill-informed propensity to insult and alienate allies by shrugging off their concerns in favour of narrow local politics.

Maybe she should also get on a plane and take a look for herself. There's a big world out there beyond Arizona.