U.S. tightens security on northern border

The United States has tightened security with Canada in its northeast corner to the dismay of businesses and residents accustomed to crossing the world’s longest undefended border with little more than a wave of a hand or a flash of a driver’s license.
Reuters reports that since last week, most travelers from Canada must show identification and submit to background checks at U.S. border posts in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said Ted Woo, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Boston.
Porous in vast stretches and often invisible, America’s 5,500-mile (8,900-km) border with Canada is drawing closer scrutiny after President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper agreed in March to work together on border security.
The tougher screening was confined to New England and did not represent new U.S. policy, Woo says.
“In the past, if an individual came across the border their IDs would be checked. But there wouldn’t be a cross-referencing of 100 percent of those people into our databases,” adds Woo, whose Boston office oversees about 40 border checkpoints in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.
While Washington focuses on illegal immigration on the volatile U.S. southern border, a sophisticated drug-smuggling tunnel discovered last year between Vancouver and Seattle and the 1999 arrest of the “millennium bomber” on Canada’s western border highlight concerns about the northern boundary.
The tougher security comes amid growing opposition to U.S. rules that would require passports or sophisticated ID cards to enter the United States from Canada beginning January 1, 2008.
Five Canadian provinces and the six New England states agreed this month to work together to postpone the legislation, Reuters reports.
More than 300,000 people travel between the United States and Canada each day. Only about 20 percent of U.S. citizens and 40 percent of Canadians hold passports, which cost nearly $100. The U.S.-proposed PASS cards would cost about half that price.