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WASHINGTON – A senior official in the Obama administration doused hopes today that the Canadian border will be treated differently than the beefed-up Mexican boundary where drug violence is escalating and countless illegal immigrants flood into the United States every day.
“One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feelings among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border,” Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, told a Canada-U.S. border conference. “We shouldn’t go light on one and heavy on the other,” she said of the Canadian and Mexican borders.
“This is one NAFTA, one area, one continent, and there should be parity there. I don’t mention this to suggest that everyone in this room will agree with that, I mention it to suggest it’s something I have to deal with, and so I ask for your sympathy.” Her comments came after she testified at U.S. Senate hearings into growing drug violence at the U.S.-Mexican border that’s prompted President Barack Obama to redeploy more than 500 federal agents to border posts and the Mexican interior. He’s also redirected US$200 million to combat smuggling of illegal drugs, money and weapons.
The United States is concerned that drug wars that killed 6,000 people in Mexico last year will spill across the border. Mexico says that American guns are fueling the violence. Napolitano told the hearing it would probably take weeks to complete a contingency plan for sending U.S. National Guard troops to border areas. She later had a sobering message for Canadians hopeful that, under Obama, there would be freer movement of goods and people across a Canada-U.S. border that looks almost Utopian compared to the chaos at the American-Mexican boundary: it’s a real border and things aren’t easing up anytime soon.
“There is a lot of concern on both sides of the border … are we really ready?” she acknowledged.
Let me get this straight, this is being done to spare Mexico’s feelings? This makes absolutely no logical sense to me… I have to assume this is about increasing the size and budget of law enforcement, our only growth sector. Another stupid Obama appointee.
Found by Mister Justin.
I used to live near the Canadian border, and now I live in Arizona. She’s nuts.
It’s going to be a real pain putting that big fence up over the Great Lakes (that’s shared between Canada and the US).
It might be difficult to do in North Dakota also, as for one month each year that turns into Lake Winnipeg South and you can boat across it.
Oh well, at least you aren’t hurting the Mexican drug lords feelings.
This won’t fly when she finally realizes that her boss has relatives up there.
What we “should” do is tell Mexico that they will be treated like Canada when they look like Canada.
What Mexico will think: we need to develop a (relatively) non corrupt police/military/governmental system.
What we actually mean: when the snow stays on the ground 6 months of the year.
Pull my finger!
/Thought we might be captioning that picture.
@#20 yes i am lumping pot in with cocaine and guns because they are all things that are brought into the united states illegally. there is a lot of money to be made in all three and a lot of violence surrounding all of them.
who cares what kind of high it is that isn’t the point.
btw i live in alabama and i have never seen a KKK rally, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
re:#26:“@#20 yes i am lumping pot in with cocaine and guns because they are all things that are brought into the united states illegally. there is a lot of money to be made in all three and a lot of violence surrounding all of them.”… etc
1, you are wrong about where the pot is coming from
2, show me one statistic where “a lot of violence” is attributable to MJ
3, I didn’t say that most of the KKK rallies in North America are in Alabama either. If i had claimed that i would be surprised that you never saw one.
#26
guns are being EXPORTED from the us to places like mexico and canada, and are responsible for a lot of the violence South and North of your borders.
#28 Guns are responsible for violence? Really? Explain.
@#27
1 the pot? the pot? are you saying that there is only one source for pot? really? but like i said, like you i am basing my argument on a little first hand knowledge and a couple of tv shows including http://www.monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/reviews/article_1446200.php/Nat_Geos_Explorer_Marijuana_Nation_tonight_Dec._2
read the article (and catch the show if you can) it talks a good bit about canada
2 i am talking about drug trafficking. are you saying that you don’t believe that violence doesn’t surround drug trafficking.
3 no you did not. you claimed that you have never seen a living pot plant and then tried to use that logic to contradict my statement that i have seen a lot of shows recently talking about all the pot that is in canada. i then attempted to show you that your logic was flawed by applying it to my part of the world.
JimR do you smoke pot? ( not really important i just want to know) Are you high now? ( this could be important)
I also brought up the fact that my friends use to get a lot of X from canada. you have not argued that point so i guess you must agree.
@#28
I agree. the gun thing was JimR and i was just responding to it.
my point has been along that while the reason for this might be silly, that a lot of things slip through the northern border and maybe it isn’t such a bad idea do guard it more closely.
#4 That’s the Dem’s version of Janet Reno
#17 Obama needs people with the same experience as his. So, she’s perfect.
#19 Becoming a failed state? Became…long ago…like most latin america.
No problem. Let the USA spend billions on a huge fence with concrete and barbed wire across the thousands of miles of Canada/US border. Then we can mount guns on our side of the border and keep all the damned American wetbacks out!
After all, you’ll all be poor because of the economic meltdown, short of oil and gas, and too hot because of global warming. Nice and cool up here, and we’ve got lots of oil!
Sounds like a really good plan! Thanks USA!!!
I thank God that I don’t live in the USA after reading this
There sure are a lot of knuckle draggers showing up here lately.
Snowbacks? That’s hilarious! I have to agree with #24. 2 entirely different borders. If you treat them the same way you risk doing some serious damage to the US/Canada trade. Here’s an example. We are a friendly country. We’re probably your best friends, warts and all. If our borders get tighter then it will be more profitable to trade resources and goods to other countries. Oil, natural gas, and raw commodities to name a few resources that would find other markets.
# 30 comhcinc… read your own link again… geez….
“Cultivation of Marijuana (hemp) stretches back from George Washington’s farm when Pot was the leading cash crop in the United States, to today, with annual profits surpassing $65 billion.”
“Vancouver, B.C. is ground central for the most robust pot consumption in the Americas.”
Vancouver Canada has a lot of consumers… no mention of any multibillion dollar industry like you have in the states. One could logically surmise that the USA is exporting some of their 65 billion bonanza to Canada, and if any of it was going the other way it would pale by comparison.
Ignorance like yours is what is killing America. And no I don’t drink or smoke. But I don’t care if you do as long as you don’t make an ass of yourself in public.
UN-FUCKING ELIEVABLE.
Mr Fusion,
Go fuck yourself. I am sure you know how.
@#36
I would make some claim about willful ignorance on your part is what is killing canada but i am really not here to get in to some silly pissing match with you.
you still are just proving my argument. if drugs are passing that easy over the border and we are going to continue the “drug war”, then we need to treat the northern border more like the southern border.
you are trying very hard to change the argument but that is it. i never said pot isn’t grown in america. i never said all pot comes from canada. i said some pot (and X which you have still chosen to ignore) comes from canada. i linked to a site that takes about pot in canada.
you are either just a normal ol’ troll or you are arguing in some misguided attempt at patriotism. either way you are just starting to look silly and i am done.
#20: Gullible is in my dictionary: I double-click the word, right-click and select “Look Up in Dictionary”. It explained it thusly:
adjective
easily persuaded to believe something; credulous : an attempt to persuade a gullible public to spend their money.