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Security concerns likely will transform a long-running debate about whether Mexican truckers should be able to drive into America’s heartland. And Mexican trucks are only part of a larger question facing policymakers after Sept. 11: how to marry a pro-business philosophy of importing goods and workers with the need to guard the nation’s points of entry.
Full implementation of NAFTA would have lifted restrictions that allow Mexican trucks no farther than 20 miles inside the U.S. border. Congressional opponents in both parties had fought to keep some limitations, while President Bush had vowed to give long-haul Mexican trucks access to all American roads.
A White House spokesman said this week that the administration has not changed its stance in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. But commerce, trucking and labor leaders agree that the political and public mood has shifted in favor of tighter border controls.
The U.S. Customs Service has been on Level 1 alert at land borders and ports of entry since Sept. 11, meaning “substantially increased vigilance” as part of “sustained intensive anti-terrorism operations.”
Many of the 60,000 Mexican trucks operating in the border region now hand off their cargo to American trucks for final delivery, so the increased scrutiny has also delayed shipments across the U.S.
“To have your truck tied up at the border for half a day, that hurts. That’s money that you are never going to recover,” said Robert Stranczek, of the Illinois Transportation Association, which represents most of the state’s 4,500 trucking companies.
Stranczek said Illinois trucking firms that operate along the border have seen their productivity drop 10 to 20 percent because of the delays.
An official with a trucking firm in the Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo says border inspections now take twice as long as before the attacks, when most drivers could complete the process in about 20 minutes.
Francisco Pinedo, who oversees cross-border traffic for Servicios Corporativos de Transporte, said U.S. inspectors are asking drivers detailed questions about their backgrounds and itineraries. The inspectors also are checking cargo from top to bottom instead of the usual cursory inspections, he said.
“We understand that things have changed,” Pinedo said.
Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service, said there are no plans to reduce the level of scrutiny at the borders.