’GRANDMOTHER’ NOT A THREAT
The U.S. ambassador to Canada is calling for smarter border security to target terrorists and smugglers and to spend “less time inspecting my grandmother.”
“Some think the only thing we worry about is terrorism, but it deals as much with everyday law enforcement than it does with terrorism,” Ambassador David Jacobson told business executives this week in Calgary, Alberta.
The United States and Canada, which share the world’s longest border, are working on plans to streamline security measures to make border crossings safer and more efficient, he said.
About 58,000 people cross the 5,500-mile border every day, and the two countries do about $1.2 billion a day in trade.
Mr. Jacobson explained that one proposal would require inspecting trucks and sealing them with tamper-proof security devices at checkpoints far from the border to relieve cross-border congestion.
“If we have a truckload of goods, and we inspect it 50 miles away from the border, and it proceeds to the border sealed, … it’s going to be able to go through much more quickly than if the truck has to be inspected at the border,” he said.
“We need to spend more time doing things that are actually going to yield results and less time inspecting my grandmother.”
Other issues involve U.S. and Canadian border officials sharing sensitive information on suspicious travelers before they reach an immigration checkpoint.
“We need to look beyond borders to uncover threats,” Mr. Jacobson said. “We need to look at borders not as our first line of defense, but as the last.”
In May, the commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency told a Senate hearing that the United States has apprehended more suspected terrorists coming across the Canadian border than the Mexican one.
“In terms of the terrorist threat, it’s commonly accepted that the more significant threat [is from the northern border],” Alan Bersin said at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and border security.
Smuggling is a serious issue on both sides of the border. Canadians complain about illegal drugs, cigarettes and firearms smuggled from the United States, while U.S. officials are more concerned with drug-trafficking from Canada.
“It’s a real problem,” Mr. Jacobson said of gun-smuggling into Canada. “It’s something we’re dealing with in the U.S. at the Canadian border and the Mexican border.”
MRS. ROONEY’S BUMPY RIDE
An American news photographer covering President Obama’s visit to Ireland last month was worried about a frail-looking, elderly lady huddled inside a Chinook helicopter on a bumpy ride to Moneygall.
“She was so small, and with reddish hair, I assumed she might be a veteran Irish news reporter along for the ride like myself,” the photographer told the Irish Echo newspaper.
The photographer, who asked not to be identified, had boarded the helicopter in Dublin for a short ride to Moneygall, Mr. Obama’s ancestral home on his mother’s side.
He said he had no chance to talk to the woman because of the noise from the helicopter blades and the bumpy ride through gale-force winds. After they landed, he made sure the lady got out of the helicopter safely and then ran to get a good space to photograph the president and first lady Michelle Obama as they walked through the village.
“I looked over as the presidential entourage approached, and there was the small woman right with President Obama,” the photographer said.
He later learned that he had shared the helicopter ride with Patricia Regan Rooney, wife of U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney.
Mrs. Rooney, who married her husband in 1952 when she was 19, is the mother of nine children and grandmother of 18.
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