(closing border patrol stations on the south border and fencing the north)
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Psalm 31:20
You hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the conspiracies of man; You keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues…
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Doer says ‘no indication’ U.S. putting up border fence
CTVNews.ca Staff
Canada’s ambassador to the United States says despite a leaked report that suggests U.S. officials are considering erecting a security fence along the Canadian border, there is “no indication” that such a plan will go ahead.
Building fences along the Canadian border is one of the options the U.S. government is considering as it mulls how to handle “trouble spots” and keep out criminals and other threats.
In a new draft report, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency includes among its proposals “fencing and other barriers” at the Canadian border to get a handle on “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”
Gary Doer cautioned against looking at what amounts to an environmental assessment as a done deal, given that it’s not the same as a fully costed construction proposal.
“The reports come out every day in the United States about this option or that option,” Doer said. “But there’s no indication that that’s what the U.S. is going to do.”
Doer said both the U.S. and Canada have to be vigilant in dealing with border security issues, such as guns and drugs being smuggled each way.
But the two sides are working together on programs such as ships patrolling the Great Lakes in an effort “to work together.”
The report does outline the possibility of ramping up other, high-tech border-patrol measures, including radiation detectors, cameras and drones. However, it rejects the idea of hiring “significantly more” border patrol agents, citing a recent hiring boom.
The report is essentially an environmental assessment of the potential impacts of increased security measures along the border. The agency will hold public consultations in Washington and in U.S. border cities next month before implementing a plan.
A report issued recently by the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that only a small portion of the border with Canada is adequately secured, pointing out that border officers control just 50 kilometres of the 6,400-kilometre boundary.
Unmanned U.S. aircraft patrol about 1,800 kilometres along the border around Washington State, Minnesota and New York State.
However, officials have questioned whether fencing would turn out to be much of a deterrent along such a vast terrain that ranges from dense forest to Prairie plain.
The report says that in addition to fencing, trenches and other barriers could be put in place to restrict movement across the border. Whatever the plans, the report says infrastructure, such as roads and trails, along the border would also have to be improved.
Elinor Sloan, an international relations expert at Carleton University, said initial public consultations for the report began about a year ago, so the proposals have been under consideration for some time.
Sloan said it is difficult to know if ideas such as a security fence are being considered in response to a specific threat.
“It’s probably driven by a perceived increase in threat along the border, but not just in the last few months,” Sloan told CTV News Channel Thursday afternoon in an interview from Ottawa.
Sloan pointed out that U.S. officials were obviously concerned about potential threats posed by the so-called “Toronto 18,” as well as the “Millennium Bomber,” who was stopped at the B.C.-Washington State border in 1999 as he tried to make his way to the Los Angeles Airport.
“Apparently there are many other (threats),” Sloan said. “Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano has indicated that there are other ones that simply can’t be released for security reasons.”
The report comes out as Canadian and U.S. officials hammer out a deal on perimeter security designed to keep goods and people moving across the border, where congestion has worsened in the years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The Canada Border Services Agency issued a statement in response to the report Thursday, saying that “policy options in the draft report have not been part of the discussions between the CBSA and U.S. CBP on ways to improve border management.”
NDP justice critic Joe Comartin blasted the report as fear-mongering by U.S. bureaucrats, saying Americans don’t view Canadians as a threat.
“When you get their security agencies just going off on this kind of a tangent … well, quite frankly, it just makes me angry,” Comartin told The Canadian Press.
“We had quite an open border prior to 9-11, and just every year it just gets tighter and tighter.”
With files from Ken Gousseau in Winnipeg and The Canadian Press
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Related article from 12 Sept 2011…
OBAMA POISED TO CLOSE NINE BORDER PATROL STATIONS
By Michael Cutler July 31, 2011 NewsWithViews.com
Just when you think things cannot get worse, our government proves us wrong!
I was sent the disturbing information about the administration’s proposed closing of nine Border Patrol stations with an additional 4 stations being reviewed with an eye to closing them as well, by a former colleague and old friend who served in the U.S. Border Patrol as well as an INS Special Agent.
It is impossible to imagine justification for closing Border Patrol stations. The further apart stations are located, the more agents will have to travel when they make arrests and the more that our beleaguered agents will have to travel to get to their assigned sectors when they are on duty. This also has serious safety implications for our agents!
Clearly the administration is determined to make it increasingly difficult for our Border Patrol agents to carry out their duties to secure our nation’s borders. The efforts of the valiant Border Patrol agents is also, of course, being undermined by the policy statements issued by the President and members of the administration to terminate removal (deportation) hearings involving hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and providing employment authorization to many of those illegal aliens. These decisions amount to the firing of a starter’s pistol along our nation’s borders to encourage many more aliens to run our borders and head to cities across this nation, from coast to coast and border to border!
Meanwhile yesterday, the President went before an unusual joint session of Congress that, as the reporters noted, resembled a State of the Union Address to advocate the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars to create new jobs! Nearly every unemployed American could have a job to go to without having a single new job created if the administration enforced the immigration laws and conducted investigations into fraud and abuses in the various categories of “temporary” work visa programs such as the H1b visas that enable foreign high-tech workers such as computer programmers to come to the United States to take jobs as programmers even while large numbers of American programmers are unemployed or underemployed doing jobs that have no relationship to programming- a profession for which they attended college and developed a high level of experience and expertise.
Yet not a single GOP candidate for the Presidency has talked about this. Incredibly, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, talked about the lessons learned by the Amnesty of 1986 but limited his remarks to the failure to aggressively implement worksite enforcement to go after illegal aliens and their employers. Mr. Gingrich did not talk about the rampant fraud that permeated that ill-conceived amnesty program and joined the most of the other candidates who said that if an illegal alien was present in the United States for a number of years that he should be provided with lawful status. He should certainly know better! There is no quick or easy way to determine how long an illegal alien who ran our borders has been present in the United States. It becomes even more difficult if the alien in question uses multiple false identities- and I can tell you from my 30 years of experience with the INS that the majority of illegal aliens routinely use many false names!
The policies of the administration and the speeches made by so many politicians, including those who would replace President Obama in the Oval Office in 2012 provide clear incentives and encouragement to people around the world who are contemplating entering the United States in violation of law that if they can run our borders they will be treated as lawful immigrants!
This also provides terrorists who desire to enter the United States to attack our nation and our citizens with a strategy to enter our country and easily embed themselves in our country provided that they can make their way into the interior of the United States. Furthermore, if an alien is granted employment authorization, that alien would likely be able to obtain a driver’s license and a Social Security card along with credit cards and bank accounts in whatever false name they provide ICE enforcement personnel.
By eliminating Border Patrol stations, in my judgement, it will make it easier for illegal aliens to succeed in running our nation’s borders as agents are being made to waste more time getting to their assigned sectors and back to their stations when they go off duty or make arrests.
This is lunacy!
Meanwhile here we are, just two days before the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 with New York and Washington, DC on high alert over credible information about a possible imminent terrorist attack!
Once again I am compelled to say that the DHS should henceforth be known as the Department of Homeland Surrender!
A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!
If our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!
We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.
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Isaiah 59:19
So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him…
