Border Paranoia

Yesterday I went to Mexico. Ciudad Juarez, to be exact. I went to vist one of several dental clinics that serve an American clientele. They are clean, fast, and prices are far below their American counterparts... important to an old man on Social Security.

The clinics provide tansportation from several points in El Paso, Texas. I go to a parking garage in El Paso, park my car and board the clinic's van.

Going to Mexico is a pleasant experience. There are no traffic delays entering the country. It is about a ten minute drive to the clinic. The clinic has their own lab, so work on dentures is done while you wait. In about an hour I was ready to go home and boarded the next van for El Paso.

There are several bridges that cross the Rio Grande, but the traffic situation on each of them is about the same if you are going into the U.S.. Four lanes of traffic sit bumper to bumper across the bridge and extend for blocks back into the city. Commercial buses and vans are permitted to cut into the line at the foot of the bridge, so we were spared some of the wait.

It took about 40 minutes to cross the short bridge. On the U.S. side of the bridge the four lanes split into about eight lanes to pass through the inspection station. Meanwhile, the pedestrian lanes are crowded with hundreds of people, Mexican and American, going back and forth to shop. The fact that it was Friday, and September 16, Mexico's Independence Day, meant there were more people crossing the border than usual.

In most of the inspection lanes, which are somewhat like the toll booths on American highways, the inspector asks the occupants of each vehicle their citizenship and each person shows their picture I.D.. They then want to know what you are bringing into the U.S. If it is liquor, or any valuable items, you are directed to an area where you pay U.S. Customs tariff, or Texas state liquor tax.

If the occupants are Mexican citizens, I assume they have some sort of I.D. that authorizes them to shop in El Paso stores, go to jobs in the U.S., or visit friends or relatives on the U.S. side.

For the most part it goes slowly but smoothly. However, it is entirely at the discretion of the inspecting officer. The lines next to us moved along in an orderly fashion, but our line crawled. The inspector insisted that the driver of every car get out of the car, open their trunk and/or the back doors. This inspector poked around inside the vehicle, then with a mirror on a stick, walked around the vehicle using the mirror to look up under the vehicle. I saw no other inspectors doing this.

Just ahead of us was a conversion van with a Texas license. When the driver got out of the van, I noticed he was wearing a tee shirt with a U.A.W. logo on the back. The inspector took about ten minutes to inspect this van. Frequently stopping to talk with other inspecting officers.

It is incredibly frustrating to just sit there in the heat, watching the other lanes of traffic move along, while you accomodate an inspector who likes to excercise their power to make you wait. If you are visualizing an inspecting officer who is bright, neatly uniformed and courteous, you are wrong. Since I had to leave the van before it was inspected, I did not get an up close look, but from about 20 feet away this inspector was so obese I could not tell it it was a man or a woman. The person literally bulged in their uniform as they waddled around each car, taking their own sweet time.

In my case, the van dropped me off at the inspection station. I had to join the line of pedestrians, show my I.D. and declare that I was bringing noithing back to the U.S. The van then picked me up on the other side of the inspection station to take me back to the garage where my car was parked.

So many Americans are paranoid about our southern border, yet they have no concept of what border crossing is like. Imagine someone drawing a line through the middle of any large American city, then restricting traffic across that line. Now imagine those restrictions being entirely at the whim of some arrogant, uncaring individual who has total power to permit or forbid your crossing. Or, the power to have you arrested if you protest.

And, please, don't remind me of 9/11. It was like this long before that terror attack.