[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 23063]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



        GENERAL CONCERNS ABOUT OUR BORDERS, LAND, AIR, AND WATER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about 
our north and south borders. We have general concerns in the United 
States about our borders, our land, air, and water, for any number of 
reasons; and our challenge is how to keep our trade flowing and our 
traffic flowing while still meeting our security concerns.
  Drug issues are a big concern in this country, illegal immigration, 
and other products that are either illegal to come in, like Cuban 
cigars, or of particular importance in regional areas such as cheese or 
other products. And of course the big concern that all Americans have 
right now is terrorism. It is of particular importance on the northern 
and southern borders of the United States, where trade with Mexico and 
Canada have become vital to the economic systems of our nations.
  My Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources 
of the Committee on Government Reform is conducting a series of 
hearings over the next few months in both the north and south borders. 
Our first hearings were held at the Highgate Springs, in Vermont, on 
the Montreal-Boston interstate corridor, and in Champlain, New York, on 
the Montreal-New York City corridor. In 2 weeks, we will be having a 
hearing in Blaine, Washington on the Vancouver-Seattle corridor.
  In addition to these hearings, we have also been systematically 
meeting with the Coast Guard on Lake Champlain and will be in Puget 
Sound with the Border Patrol, with INS, with Customs and DEA. We also 
visit some of the lower traffic ports of entry in each of these areas. 
Some of these in the past have only been manned part-time with one 
person. There are many areas along our borders, both north and south, 
where you can just walk across. These are clear challenges as we try to 
control not only illegal drugs and immigration and products but also 
terrorists from entering our Nation.
  With these hearings, because of the importance of working with our 
neighbors, we have invited participants from the parliaments as well as 
business representatives from Canada and plan to do the same with 
Mexico. As a result of our first hearings, in which Parliamentarian 
Denis Paradis from Quebec participated, he asked me to come to Ottawa 
to discuss with the numerous committees and other parliamentarians, as 
they enter into the final stages of their debate on anti-terrorism 
legislation and immigration bills what we have passed here in this 
House.
  I returned from Ottawa a few hours ago, after spending a day and a 
half with our Canadian friends and our U.S. Embassy, and I would like 
to discuss a few of the important points tonight, and probably get a 
little bit into these again tomorrow.
  Twenty-five percent of all trade from the United States is with 
Canada. To put this in perspective, the trade crossing the Ambassador 
Bridge between Windsor and Detroit, not all the trade that comes 
through Detroit, the tunnels and the other bridges, just the Ambassador 
Bridge alone, the trade over the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit is 
greater than all U.S.-Japanese trade. All the trade with U.S. and Japan 
does not equal what goes across one bridge in Detroit.
  As Canadian Parliamentarian Susan Whalen of the Windsor Riding has 
pointed out to me multiple times, it is not just trade and tourism, 
which are big, for example, our Speaker's State of Florida, if the 
Canadians do not come down to Florida, it is not clear what would 
happen to the tourism business. Many United States Congressmen and 
women represent more Canadians at this time than the Canadians 
themselves in their parliament do. We have a big tourism exchange. Many 
people retire and go back and forth with their relatives.
  But we also have workers across the border in Canada and in Mexico. 
In Windsor, there are 1,100 nurses who daily cross to meet the needs of 
the Detroit hospitals and the Detroit area hospitals. What are the 
people in these hospitals going to do if we wall off the borders or, as 
is currently happening, it takes 4 hours on many days? They are not 
able to get to the hospitals. The hospitals do not know how to staff. 
They are running into these problems on borders.
  Clearly, we have to figure out some different methods of how we are 
going to do this long term because maybe a 2-hour is tolerable, but 4 
hours is pushing the extreme. We have a 30 to 50 percent reduced 
traffic right now. What is going to happen if the traffic comes back? 
How are we going to meet the economic, the tourism, the trade and the 
workforce movement pressures?
  Now, there are real reasons why traffic has slowed down. It is not 
just to spite either one of us on either side. There are real concerns. 
In the narcotics issue alone, we have seen a rise in illegal narcotics 
coming across from Canada, not just Mexico. BC Bud and Quebec Gold both 
are very potent forms of marijuana like we have never seen before in 
the United States. BC Bud is very near the levels in THC of cocaine. 
They have brought it into Indiana. Indiana has now become an exporter 
of marijuana to California and around the country. They bring it in, 
and they plant it in our soybeans and corn.
  Quebec Gold is being shipped down to New York City and is right now 
more higher priced because of its potency than cocaine on the streets 
of New York. Ecstacy is coming in predominantly from Holland and 
Rotterdam into Canada and down, precursors for methamphetamine labs and 
meth labs.
  Clearly, we have to work on the narcotics issues, but both nations 
have other concerns as well, and the terrorism, and I will get more 
into how both our parliament and their parliament are trying to address 
these concerns and balance the needs of both commerce and terrorism.

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