BORDER NEWS

An agreement under discussion by US and Canadian officials could possibly help to improve security in the two countries.  Under the plan, the countries would establish joint security checkpoints overseas, and all information about passengers would be stored in a shared database.  Travel between the US and Canada would still be regulated, but officials hope that by doing more screening abroad, the pressure on officials stationed on the border will be decreased.

*********

Later this month, newly appointed Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge will meet with Mexico’s top security chief to discuss ways to improve security on the Mexican border.  Shortly after the meeting, scheduled for November 19th, a bilateral panel is due to address the same issues.  While there is no evidence that any of the 19 hijackers entered the US through Mexico, the director of the Mexican National Migration Institute recently observed that it was highly possible that some of them spent time in Mexico.  In addition to making the border secure, officials must also take into account cross border trade.  While the migration talks are resuming this month, President Fox has recently stated that because of the September 11th attacks, no overall agreement on legalizing the status of undocumented Mexicans in the US will be reached this year.  The week before the attacks, Fox was in Washington, DC, the guest of honor at the first state dinner of the Bush Administration.  While in the US, Fox had called for an agreement to be reached by the end of the year. 

*********

Officials with the unions representing Border Patrol agents are growing concerned that the long hours agents are working following September 11^th may be putting both themselves and others at risk.  Many agents are working 20 hours of overtime each week, with at least 100,000 total hours of overtime logged since the terrorist attacks.  Efforts are being made to prevent the agents from being burned out, but many are concerned that agents worn out by two months of 60-hour workweeks could fail to adequately perform their jobs. 

*********

Officials this week briefly closed three ports of entry in California after receiving a bomb threat.  Several hundred employees were evacuated from the San Ysidro, Otay Mesa and Tecate ports, and all traffic was stopped from entering the US.  An hour and a half later, a bomb sweep had revealed nothing and the ports were reopened.  This was the first time the California border was closed since September 11th, when it was closed twice.

*********

Over the past couple of weeks, INS inspectors at the San Ysidro port of entry in California report a significant increase in the number of Chaldeans from Iraq seeking entry to the US.  In the past week alone, more than 50 were apprehended, most of who are expected to seek asylum.  Chaldeans are members of a Christian denomination that claim to have faced persecution in Muslim dominated Iraq. 

*********

The National Migration Institute in Mexico recently reported that more than 350,000 Mexican nationals had returned to Mexico from the US since the September 11^th terrorist attacks.