U.S. to address border snarls
Homeland security head envisions `futuristic' boundary, plans to keep

Mar 26, 2009 04:30 AM
Mitch Potter
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON–A "futuristic border" that harnesses new technology to enable the safe and seamless flow of people and goods is what U.S. President Barack Obama's new secretary of homeland security says she imagines when she looks north to America's clogged crossings with Canada.

Acknowledging she has spent most of her life along the more problematic U.S.-Mexican border, former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano said yesterday she is beginning to absorb the different dynamics that prevail along the Canadian side – and is ready to address and improve cross-border flow through better collaboration with Ottawa, including twice-yearly meetings to unravel the worst snarls.

"We are in the midst of a culture change" in border relations because of long-planned new security requirements that will begin June 1, Napolitano told a gathering of experts from both sides at Washington's Brookings Institution.

The new rules, she admitted, would bring an end to the casual criss-crossing enjoyed for decades by people who "just don't think of it as two different countries."

Passports or enhanced driver's licences now will be a mandatory minimum for land crossing in either direction.

But as Ottawa and Washington brace for the fallout from the new system, Napolitano challenged border experts to take a long view and propose scenarios to ensure the two countries maintain "a closeness that continually needs to be reinvigorated and re-energized in the midst of this culture change."

Said Napolitano: "How do we make the United States-Canadian border a futuristic border? How can we think beyond the kind of existing technologies we use today and really think: `What could a border between two countries like Canada and the United States actually look like?'

"We are seeking contribution. That future thinking – outside the box – not of what we have now but what we should have 20 years hence, is really where we need the most help."

Napolitano acknowledged the continuing controversy surrounding the June 1 implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative but said she does not intend to support another delay in the plan, which was originally to take effect early last year..

Earlier, a senior Democratic lawmaker, New York congresswoman Louise Slaughter, told the Brookings forum she intends to introduce legislation to delay the passport rule by one year, until June 2010, citing worries over potential border delays during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

"I don't believe we are ready," said Slaughter, author of earlier legislation that delayed the plan last year.

"There will be pure chaos."

Napolitano said a bill proposing yet another postponement would send a negative "psychological message" to those who believe the rules will never change.

"The law says June. I'm going to work very hard to ensure it goes as smoothly in June as it can," Napolitano said, adding that the passport rule "is going to be part and parcel of the security of the North American continent on both borders."

As she gains knowledge of the particular imperatives along the Canada-U.S. border, Napolitano said, she is also sensitive to the widely held view throughout America's southern border states 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 that to suggest everyone in this room would agree – I just mention it to suggest that it is something I have to deal with.

"So I'm asking for your sympathy."