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Letters to the Editor: Border Program, Gas Tax Reality, Unpaid Miles, Fuel Prices
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Border Pilot Program
I agree with Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters: Congress should continue the cross-border program between the United States and Mexico. The program promotes free trade with our North American Free Trade Agreement partner and gives a huge incentive for U.S.-based businesses to expand into the untapped Mexican truck industry.
The United States has spent millions of dollars to ensure security, and this program not only allows us to test that security, it puts it to good use.
Congress and other groups worry about unsafe and illegal trucks entering the United States. Safety and security checks at the border will make the border-crossing checkpoints more effective than most state-run scale houses. Mexico has agreed to adhere to the driver standards set forth by the U.S. Department of Transportation — the same rules U.S. drivers break on a daily basis when driving vehicles despite out-of-service issues, expired physical exams or invalid driver’s licenses.
Congress wants to stop a program before the data can be compiled to show its results. We should allow the program to run for at least
one year to see its effect on the United States.
The program is only controversial because U.S. citizens fear they will lose something to the Mexican drivers. But we have to ask what we are going to lose:
• Jobs? No, we have a shortage of good, qualified drivers in the United States. Industry? If anything, opening the border tells companies there is no need to move out of the United States to cut transportation time and costs. Now, you can move your product with one carrier directly from your facility in the United States to your customer in Mexico and vice versa — without transloading, warehousing or delay costs.
• Border control? Again, no — not with the growing use of security at the borders to deal with illegal immigrants. We will still maintain safe and controlled borders.
What are the possible gains from the cross-border program?
• First, we gain access to hundreds of
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