Obama’s Message: Glory Days of Open Border Are Gone

(Globe & Mail – John Ibbitson)

Janet Napolitano has a message for Canadians: It’s a border. Get used to it.

The new Homeland Security Secretary had only stern comments yesterday about the state and future of the Canada-U.S. border, at a symposium hosted by the Brookings Institution.

Her goal seemed to be to throw a bucket of reality on anyone who hoped that the arrival of Barack Obama’s new administration would herald a loosening of new restrictions on cross-border traffic. The days when Canadians and Americans moved back and forth across the border – “it’s as though there’s not a border at all,” as she put it – are over. “It’s a real border, and we need to address it as a real border,” Ms. Napolitano said, calling on both Americans and Canadians to accept this “change of culture.”

That culture changes most emphatically June 1, when the United States will require anyone entering from Canada to produce a passport or its equivalent.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, whose district encompasses Rochester, Buffalo and Niagara Falls, believes she knows what will happen that day. “There will be pure chaos,” she predicted. Lines will lengthen, people will be denied entry, tourism and business will suffer. And with the addition of the Olympics it’s going to be even more so.” […]

Ms. Napolitano confessed that, having lived most of her life in either New Mexico, where she was raised, or Arizona, where she was governor, “I’ve never actually spent much time on the Canadian border,” though she plans to visit it later this spring and this summer. To educate herself, she commissioned a study of the border, chastising Canadian journalists who speculated that this was an ominous sign. Read more here.