Fear bites the nails of insecurity. Thankfully, those patrolling the border between the United States and Canada are doing plenty to bolster national security and ease fears.
U.S. border agents may not be standing in lock-armed defense to stop terrorists and drug smugglers, but they’re performing their duties with sufficient resources and reasonable numbers of personnel.
Fears were raised last week when border patrol agents shut down a 360-foot tunnel designed to haul drugs across the 49th parallel near Lynden. But in this news story, relief should have come hand-in-hand with the initial concern: The authorities had followed the development of the drug tunnel for months before its completion. The border was successfully defended.
Joe Giuliano, whose border patrol bureau in Blaine protects a vast expanse of the Northwest border, including the area near Lynden, said his division has all the tools it needs to perform its duties.
It would be unreasonable to spend excessive amounts to meet an agents-per-mile quota across a 4,000-mile border. The resources across the northern border are well appropriated, with a healthy reliance on aerial and visual technology to guard it. Unlike the southern border with Mexico, where there is a constantly clamor for more agents to halt illegal immigration, the northern crossing isn’t short on supplies.
“If I had 2,000 agents here, there wouldn’t be enough work for them to do,” Giuliano said. “There are different needs in different places.”
Giuliano did qualify his assurance by saying that security needs are constantly changing. However, the northern divide is not a “forgotten border” as some may claim. It is important to get the facts before demanding change.
In fact, much already has changed. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress tripled the number of officers protecting the northern border and spent $50 million on technology improvements. In 2004, Congress passed an act that will increase the patrol agents along the border by 20 percent each year between 2006 and 2010, just in time for the Vancouver Olympics.
The Olympics brings a new concern: the ability of tourists to cross the border with a minimum of hassle, feeding the U.S. and Canadian economies. The border patrol must continue to maintain a balance between protection and reasonable passage.
Giuliano praised U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, for his work to balance the need for resources with a national perspective on borders, ports and immigration security. That is a perspective everyone should adopt. By reasonable standards, the northern border is being suitably sheltered. Unfounded fear mustn’t become a passport for unnecessary change.
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