Windsor In The Windy City
In light of the article that claims that passports will not be needed until 2009, I thought you might find this story of interest. I found it over a year ago but did not post it until now.
What is interesting to me is how little anything has changed here in since May, 2006. If anything, things seem worse off now.
The Chicago Tribune ran the story about our City and the border issue. I think it is quite well done. It is something that our two Ministers from Queen's Park should be telling their colleagues if Windsor ever comes knocking on their doors looking for more financial help for our businesses. Either that or Eddie better start talking to the Rolling Stones about a concert in the area as Toronto did after the SARS scare.
Canadians also paying price of 9/11 security
By Tim Jones
Tribune correspondent
Published May 24, 2006
WINDSOR, Ontario -- At this spot along the world's longest unprotected border, the cost of security is measured in terms of Americans who don't come around much anymore--not for dinner, not for Cuban cigars, not to gamble and not to watch the nudie shows, delicately known here as the "Windsor Ballet."
The heavy traffic of people coming through Detroit to enjoy the quaint and quirky charms of Windsor has plunged by millions since the Sept. 11 attacks. And now these neighbors separated by an international border and connected by a bridge and a tunnel are fighting identification mandates in an anti-terrorism law that they fear will deliver a crippling if not fatal blow to their long, friendly and enormously profitable relationship.
Often overlooked in the white-hot debate over protecting the border with Mexico is language requiring people traveling between the United States and Canada to have passports or similar identification before they can cross the border.
That requirement, part of a law approved by Congress in 2004, does not take effect until January 2008, but the approach of the law already has dampened tourism and injected uncertainty over future conventions and events that have historically lured large numbers of Americans into Canada.
Although serious border issues with Canada are rare, the porous nature of the 3,145-mile border along the lower 48 states is such that unusual events carry outsized impact.
In December 1999, U.S. border officials in Port Angeles, Wash., arrested a Montreal man, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to drive his rental car from a ferry out of Canada. The vehicle was loaded with 130 pounds of explosives and four timing devices and was believed headed for Los Angeles International Airport, where it was to be exploded to mark the new millennium.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of U.S. border guards at the Canadian border has tripled, to about 1,000, according to Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. That compares with about 9,500 agents from the U.S. Border Patrol stationed along the 1,989-mile border with Mexico. President Bush announced plans this month to bolster the force on the Mexican border with 6,000 National Guard troops.
Even with the stiffened security on the northern border, the number of arrests from Canada are, at best, a smidgen compared with apprehensions of Mexicans. The Border Patrol reported 7,345 arrests on the Canadian border in fiscal year 2005, with fewer than 1,800 in the Detroit region. Just under 1.2 million people were apprehended at the Mexican border in 2005.
Balancing the interests of security with personal freedom has always been tricky. Since Sept. 11, Windsor has borne the brunt of the damage from this awkward balancing act--perhaps more than any other Canadian border community.
Sandra Bradt, director of tourism for the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County & Pelee Island, said the issue is troubling.
"So what price security?" Bradt asked. "What good is security if people can't make a living?"
Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said this industrial city of 208,000 people is trying to adjust to a new reality because the "balance has shifted."
"The bigger threat is our own fear and how we deal with that," Francis said.
This is not easy for a city that for decades has lived on offering what Detroit lost long ago, if it ever had it: quiet, tree-lined streets, cozy Italian restaurants, a haven from the turmoil of urban America. Windsor has thrived on the impulses of Detroiters wanting to get away for a while.
That has changed dramatically. Windsor counted 7.1 million visits by Americans from Detroit in 2000. In 2004, the number dropped by nearly half, to 3.8 million. Sam Ambrosio operated his popular Italian restaurant on the patronage of Americans, who came for mussels and veal and were 90 percent of his clientele. Now it's 20 percent.
"We've had a good feeling about each other for years," Ambrosio said of his American friends, whom he calls his "special guests, not customers."
"You can't make everyone a criminal," said Ambrosio, bitter about the tightened security at the border and the prospect of even more restrictions. "Pretty soon they'll be putting a machine gun on your chest."
Windsor's troubles are not entirely related to security. The yo-yo-like Canadian dollar is the strongest in three decades, giving Canadians new incentive to shop across the border--and to take their dollars to gamble at Detroit's three casinos instead of Windsor's one.
Eighty percent of Casino Windsor's customers are American, said spokeswoman Holly Ward. The casino has aggressively tried to hold onto the American gamblers, offering double and triple winnings in response to the weaker U.S. currency. Every Saturday the casino has prize drawings, giving away a total of $100,000. In February the casino gave away 20 new automobiles.
The casino's challenge will increase at the end of the month when the government of Ontario enacts a province wide smoking ban. "It's just a whole can of worms," Ward said.
Concern on the American side, in the Detroit metropolitan area of more than 4 million people, is not so evident. It is clear, said Sarah Hubbard of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, that the area faces an economic threat from Canadians not attending sporting events, museums, restaurants and shopping malls.
"A lot of people don't realize how closely integrated our economies are," said Hubbard, the chamber's vice president for government relations. "There's just so much focus now on the southern [Mexican] border."
The connection between Michigan and Ontario is the largest trade exchange in North America, the international link to major transportation routes. About 16 million cars and 5.3 million commercial vehicles crossed the Windsor-Detroit border in 2004, and the value of trade exchanging hands at this crossing and Port Huron totaled $450 million a day.
It's the discretionary travel, though, that has outsized importance, and requiring visitors to provide passports at the border would almost certainly put a crimp in travel. Fewer than 40 percent of Canadians have passports, compared to about 20 percent of Americans. The cost is an impediment to many, officials say. Currently, drivers crossing the border can proceed with a valid driver's license or a birth certificate.
Niagara Falls has not suffered much falloff in tourism since Sept. 11, in part because it is a destination spot. Windsor is spur-of-the-moment, the epitome of discretionary spending. Jack Shanfield knows that all too well.
Shanfield runs what might be called a grandmother's paradise, a sprawling downtown corner store crammed with Royal Doulton figurines, Wedgwood crystal, Lenox china and other delicate specialties. Commemorative plates are tacked onto nearly every open wall space.
"American stores don't have this," Shanfield said proudly, adding that his unique advantage may be sharply diluted if the passport requirement is enforced.
"This is all in the name of security," Shanfield said scornfully. "These are not the people we should be worried about."
But worry they do. Mayor Francis and others complain that the perception of trouble at the border--long lines, a passport requirement that is not yet in effect, hassles from border guards--is scaring people away. A passport requirement is overkill, they say. A better and cheaper alternative would be an enhanced driver's license that could be quickly checked at the border.
Opponents of the passport requirement won a victory last week in the U.S. Senate with the approval of an amendment that would delay implementation of the security procedure by 18 months, to the summer of 2009, allowing more time to develop a less-expensive alternative.
"We're friends," said Ambrosio, the restaurant operator who wonders if he'll ever see his longtime patrons again. "You don't check friends who have been going back across the border for 50 years. There's got to be another way."
What is interesting to me is how little anything has changed here in since May, 2006. If anything, things seem worse off now.
The Chicago Tribune ran the story about our City and the border issue. I think it is quite well done. It is something that our two Ministers from Queen's Park should be telling their colleagues if Windsor ever comes knocking on their doors looking for more financial help for our businesses. Either that or Eddie better start talking to the Rolling Stones about a concert in the area as Toronto did after the SARS scare.
Canadians also paying price of 9/11 security
By Tim Jones
Tribune correspondent
Published May 24, 2006
WINDSOR, Ontario -- At this spot along the world's longest unprotected border, the cost of security is measured in terms of Americans who don't come around much anymore--not for dinner, not for Cuban cigars, not to gamble and not to watch the nudie shows, delicately known here as the "Windsor Ballet."
The heavy traffic of people coming through Detroit to enjoy the quaint and quirky charms of Windsor has plunged by millions since the Sept. 11 attacks. And now these neighbors separated by an international border and connected by a bridge and a tunnel are fighting identification mandates in an anti-terrorism law that they fear will deliver a crippling if not fatal blow to their long, friendly and enormously profitable relationship.
Often overlooked in the white-hot debate over protecting the border with Mexico is language requiring people traveling between the United States and Canada to have passports or similar identification before they can cross the border.
That requirement, part of a law approved by Congress in 2004, does not take effect until January 2008, but the approach of the law already has dampened tourism and injected uncertainty over future conventions and events that have historically lured large numbers of Americans into Canada.
Although serious border issues with Canada are rare, the porous nature of the 3,145-mile border along the lower 48 states is such that unusual events carry outsized impact.
In December 1999, U.S. border officials in Port Angeles, Wash., arrested a Montreal man, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to drive his rental car from a ferry out of Canada. The vehicle was loaded with 130 pounds of explosives and four timing devices and was believed headed for Los Angeles International Airport, where it was to be exploded to mark the new millennium.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of U.S. border guards at the Canadian border has tripled, to about 1,000, according to Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. That compares with about 9,500 agents from the U.S. Border Patrol stationed along the 1,989-mile border with Mexico. President Bush announced plans this month to bolster the force on the Mexican border with 6,000 National Guard troops.
Even with the stiffened security on the northern border, the number of arrests from Canada are, at best, a smidgen compared with apprehensions of Mexicans. The Border Patrol reported 7,345 arrests on the Canadian border in fiscal year 2005, with fewer than 1,800 in the Detroit region. Just under 1.2 million people were apprehended at the Mexican border in 2005.
Balancing the interests of security with personal freedom has always been tricky. Since Sept. 11, Windsor has borne the brunt of the damage from this awkward balancing act--perhaps more than any other Canadian border community.
Sandra Bradt, director of tourism for the Convention & Visitors Bureau of Windsor, Essex County & Pelee Island, said the issue is troubling.
"So what price security?" Bradt asked. "What good is security if people can't make a living?"
Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis said this industrial city of 208,000 people is trying to adjust to a new reality because the "balance has shifted."
"The bigger threat is our own fear and how we deal with that," Francis said.
This is not easy for a city that for decades has lived on offering what Detroit lost long ago, if it ever had it: quiet, tree-lined streets, cozy Italian restaurants, a haven from the turmoil of urban America. Windsor has thrived on the impulses of Detroiters wanting to get away for a while.
That has changed dramatically. Windsor counted 7.1 million visits by Americans from Detroit in 2000. In 2004, the number dropped by nearly half, to 3.8 million. Sam Ambrosio operated his popular Italian restaurant on the patronage of Americans, who came for mussels and veal and were 90 percent of his clientele. Now it's 20 percent.
"We've had a good feeling about each other for years," Ambrosio said of his American friends, whom he calls his "special guests, not customers."
"You can't make everyone a criminal," said Ambrosio, bitter about the tightened security at the border and the prospect of even more restrictions. "Pretty soon they'll be putting a machine gun on your chest."
Windsor's troubles are not entirely related to security. The yo-yo-like Canadian dollar is the strongest in three decades, giving Canadians new incentive to shop across the border--and to take their dollars to gamble at Detroit's three casinos instead of Windsor's one.
Eighty percent of Casino Windsor's customers are American, said spokeswoman Holly Ward. The casino has aggressively tried to hold onto the American gamblers, offering double and triple winnings in response to the weaker U.S. currency. Every Saturday the casino has prize drawings, giving away a total of $100,000. In February the casino gave away 20 new automobiles.
The casino's challenge will increase at the end of the month when the government of Ontario enacts a province wide smoking ban. "It's just a whole can of worms," Ward said.
Concern on the American side, in the Detroit metropolitan area of more than 4 million people, is not so evident. It is clear, said Sarah Hubbard of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, that the area faces an economic threat from Canadians not attending sporting events, museums, restaurants and shopping malls.
"A lot of people don't realize how closely integrated our economies are," said Hubbard, the chamber's vice president for government relations. "There's just so much focus now on the southern [Mexican] border."
The connection between Michigan and Ontario is the largest trade exchange in North America, the international link to major transportation routes. About 16 million cars and 5.3 million commercial vehicles crossed the Windsor-Detroit border in 2004, and the value of trade exchanging hands at this crossing and Port Huron totaled $450 million a day.
It's the discretionary travel, though, that has outsized importance, and requiring visitors to provide passports at the border would almost certainly put a crimp in travel. Fewer than 40 percent of Canadians have passports, compared to about 20 percent of Americans. The cost is an impediment to many, officials say. Currently, drivers crossing the border can proceed with a valid driver's license or a birth certificate.
Niagara Falls has not suffered much falloff in tourism since Sept. 11, in part because it is a destination spot. Windsor is spur-of-the-moment, the epitome of discretionary spending. Jack Shanfield knows that all too well.
Shanfield runs what might be called a grandmother's paradise, a sprawling downtown corner store crammed with Royal Doulton figurines, Wedgwood crystal, Lenox china and other delicate specialties. Commemorative plates are tacked onto nearly every open wall space.
"American stores don't have this," Shanfield said proudly, adding that his unique advantage may be sharply diluted if the passport requirement is enforced.
"This is all in the name of security," Shanfield said scornfully. "These are not the people we should be worried about."
But worry they do. Mayor Francis and others complain that the perception of trouble at the border--long lines, a passport requirement that is not yet in effect, hassles from border guards--is scaring people away. A passport requirement is overkill, they say. A better and cheaper alternative would be an enhanced driver's license that could be quickly checked at the border.
Opponents of the passport requirement won a victory last week in the U.S. Senate with the approval of an amendment that would delay implementation of the security procedure by 18 months, to the summer of 2009, allowing more time to develop a less-expensive alternative.
"We're friends," said Ambrosio, the restaurant operator who wonders if he'll ever see his longtime patrons again. "You don't check friends who have been going back across the border for 50 years. There's got to be another way."
posted by JoeBlog at 6:10 a.m.
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