Border Management at the Millennium

Abstract

Introduction On 14 December 1999, with the world focused on the coming millennium, Ahmed Ressam was arrested by U.S. Customs as he attempted to enter the United States from Canada with bomb-making materials. This arrest and the media attention that followed, as U.S. and Canadian agencies made further arrests across the border and unraveled a terrorist network, were the latest examples of the increasing attention being paid to the Canada-United States border. Abu Mezer, who intended to bomb the New York City subway system in 1997, also entered via the U.S.-Canadian border. For many Canadians and Americans, the sudden attention to this long-standing, functional, and peaceful border seemed quite startling. Why has the border, long taken for granted, suddenly become an issue in U.S.-Canadian relations? I argue that it results from the following four factors and their implications. The four factors are: unprecedented levels of cross-border movement of goods and people, security concerns, current political interest in both countries, and enhanced activism by local players. Project Description The analysis and conclusions presented in this article are based on fieldwork conducted from the fall of 1998 through the spring of 1999 as one component of the International Migration Policy Program's project entitled Self-Governance at the Border. This comparative international project undertaken by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace aimed to better understand how communities that straddle an international border, and at times form a single economic and cultural entity, manage migration issues in the context of managing other common cross-border challenges. The Canada-U.S. border was one of five different international border regions in this project. (1) During five extensive visits to three areas along the Canada-U.S. border, I visited over ten ports of entry and two capitals and conducted approximately one hundred interviews in both countries with local government officials, business leaders, federal immigration and customs officials, bridge operators, community-based nongovernmental organizations, researchers, and local residents. (2) The goal was to catalogue existing local initiatives, understand and explain similarities and differences, identify and contextualize best practices, and share these findings with a variety of stakeholders, including federal governments. Key Factors Background The United States and Canada share an 8,895-km border (approximately 5,000 miles), the longest undefended border in the world. The countries also share a language, historical tradition, an emphasis on democratic principles and the rule of law, and global alliances. Similar levels of social and economic development have contributed to the social and economic integration between the countries, particularly between border communities, as well as to the long-established access to each other's countries. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service maintains over one hundred ports of entry staffed by inspectors along the border, while the border also is patrolled by approximately three hundred Border Patrol agents (compared to eight thousand agents along the two thousand-mile U.S.-Mexico border). (3) Legitimate Cross-border Movement Steady volumes of trade and the movement of businessmen, family members, vacationers, and students certainly are nothing new for the Canada-U.S. border. The sheer volume of goods and people today, however--which is higher than ever before and shows no signs of slowing down--is one of the factors contributing to the increased attention to the border. Clearly this tremendous growth in commercial and passenger traffic means that more people are coming into contact with the border, raising its visibility. More importantly, however, it is also an issue because of the degree of economic integration between the countries and the resulting impact on the existing infrastructure, raising questions of border management. …