Posted on 06/07/2006 4:06:12 PM PDT by dennisw
Kansas City is planning to allow the Mexican government to open a Mexican customs office in conjunction with the Kansas City SmartPort. This will be the first foreign customs facility allowed to operate on U.S. soil.
City leaders voted last month to give the facility an innocuous name to hide its true identity as an arm of the Mexican government, staffed by Mexican officials.
In fact, Kansas City is so enthusiastic about the opportunity, the cost of building the $3 million dollar facility for Mexico will be paid for by Kansas City taxpayers, not by the Mexican government.
The current plan for the NAFTA Super Corridor calls for the construction of a 12-lane highway (six lanes in each direction) along Interstate 35. The Kansas City SmartPort is designed to be the central hub in the planned NAFTA north-south superhighway cutting through the heart of the United States.
Supercargo ships, carrying goods made by cheap labor in the Far East and China, will unload in the Mexican port at Lazaro Cardenas, eliminating the need to use costly union longshoremen workers in Los Angeles or Long Beach. Rather than transporting the containers by trucks from the West Coast, using Teamster drivers, or on rail, with the assistance of railroad labor in the United Transportation Union, the containers will be loaded onto Mexican non-union railroads at Lazaro Cardenas. At Monterrey, Mexico, the containers will then be loaded onto Mexican non-union semi-trailer trucks that will cross the border at Laredo, Texas, to begin their journey north along the Trans-Texas Corridor, the first leg of the planned continental NAFTA Super Corridor.
To speed the crossing at Laredo, Texas, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America working groups within the U.S. Department of Commerce will allow Mexican trucks to be equipped with electronic FAST technology so the trucks can cross the border in express lanes.
At the Kansas City SmartPort hub, the containers can be transferred to semi-trailers heading east or west, or simply stay on the Mexican trucks all the way into Canada.
According to the SmartPort website, in March 2005, Kansas City signed a cooperative pact with representatives from the Mexican state of Michoacan, where Lazaro Cardenas is located, to increase the cargo volume between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City. The whole point is to move cargo fast, using cheap, below union-wage scale Mexican workers to move the containers from Asia into the heart of the USA.
Shipments will be pre-screened in Southeast Asia, and the shipper will send advance notification to Mexican and American Customs with the corresponding ''pre-clearance'' information on the cargo. Upon arrival in Mexico, containers will pass through multiple X-ray and gamma ray screenings, allowing any containers with anomalies to quickly be removed for further inspection.
Container shipments will be tracked using intelligent transportation systems, or ITS, that could include global positioning systems or radio frequency identification systems, and monitored on their way to inland trade-processing centers in Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States.
As the Kansas City SmartPort website brags: ''Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.''
Kansas City Southern, or KCS, has just completed putting together what is being called ''The NAFTA Railroad.'' On Jan. 1, 2005, KCS took control of The Texas Mexican Railway Company and the U.S. portion of the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas.
Then in April 2005, KCS purchased the controlling interests in Transportacion Ferroviaria Mexicana, which KCS promptly renamed the Kansas City Southern de Mexico, or KCSM.
Again, the Kansas City SmartPort website notes that ''Kansas City Southern is installing Spanish-language versions of its computer operating system (MCS) in an effort to increase train speeds, reduce waiting times at terminals and enable the free flow of locomotives and rail cars between the United States and Mexico via Kansas City Southern's railroad bridge at Laredo, Texas.''
No stop is planned for customs inspection for KCSM trains until the Mexican customs facility located at Kansas City. The only security check planned at the U.S. border with Mexico is electronic, with the KCSM railroad moving along pre-approved KCS rail lines.
Yippee! I can get all the banned goodies I want on the NAFTA Express! Thank you NAFTA!
Oops forgot /sarcasm
You've got to be SHI#$%@ING me American taxpayers putting up $3mil for a MEXICAN building. Are they out of their minds.
Well it looks like its going to produce a lot of jobs. Spending money on this makes a lot more sense than having to pay for new Baseball and Football stadiums.
If I'm ever in the area...I'll be sure to use the front entrance as a commode.
Driving trucks, another job American's won't do.
Which means that a container with enough lead can be loaded with nukes and drop shipped all the way to the interior of the USA without being checked once.
I wonder if the Chinese have bought the plans for the Tsar Bomba and what a 100MT explosion would do to KC and the surrounding area. I bet the fallout pattern would cripple us.
Not that anything is preventing anyone from doing the same right now.
More wage suppression, less security, .5% short eterm increases in profits. Sounds like a Bush-Dem plan for sure.
"Well it looks like its going to produce a lot of jobs. Spending money on this makes a lot more sense than having to pay for new Baseball and Football stadiums."
Yeah, most of those jobs will go to the illegal termites that have infested this country. You'll probably be ecstatic over that.
"City leaders voted last month to give the facility an innocuous name to hide its true identity as an arm of the Mexican government, staffed by Mexican officials."
Shouldn't this read: "corrupt" city leaders voted last month to give the facility an innocuous name to hide "their" true identity as "pawns of the Mexican government -- on the take -- and traitors to the American people."
What? Trade is good. This is going to br major for there area and makes a lot of sense.
In a written release from the city, Dérbez said that roughly $400 billion in trade occurs between Mexico and the United States and that the new Kansas City-based customs office and trade corridor probably would double that amount.
http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005/02/21/daily39.html
"Through the plan, Kansas City's rail, highway transportation and foreign trade warehousing groups would partner with their Mexican counterparts and market themselves jointly to Asian, Central American and other foreign companies that want to cut distribution times and costs, the city said in the release."
The jobs that will spin off this could be substantial.
It's a pipe dream that will never happen.
Disgusting/PING
I am not sure where Corsi is getting that the officals in Kansas City are trying to hide something. I appears it been all over the news in the papers there.
Sort of related here.
Mexican agency OKs KCS purchase of railroad stake
Kansas City Business Journal - October 6, 2004
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A Mexican agency has approved Kansas City Southern's new application to buy Mexican partner Grupo TMM's interest in their jointly owned Mexican railroad, TFM.
Warren Erdman, KC Southern's vice president of corporate affairs, said Wednesday that approval by Mexico's Foreign Investment Commission was required for a foreign company to become a majority owner of a Mexican railway company. The commission's approval will remain valid until Oct. 5, 2005.
Before that deadline, KC Southern (NYSE: KSU) hopes to negotiate the purchase of Grupo TMM's 48.4 percent share of Grupo TFM, the holding company that owns TFM. KC Southern owns 46.6 percent of Grupo TFM, and the Mexican government owns the rest.
KC Southern hopes to buy a controlling interest in TFM and combine it with its U.S. railroads under a new name: Nafta Rail.
"This is very good news for us," Erdman said. "It means the Mexican government has approved our investment in the controlling interest in TFM. Now we will be working with TMM to hopefully close on that deal."
KC Southern thought it had a deal in April 2003, when TMM agreed to sell its controlling interest in TFM for $412 million and its interest in the Texas-Mexican Railway Co. (Tex-Mex), a short-line railroad that connects the Kansas City Southern Railway with TFM, for $32.7 million.
TMM officials reversed themselves in August 2003, calling off both deals. But TMM agreed to sell Tex-Mex on Aug. 16 of this year.
Around the same time, a U.S. arbitration panel found the TFM purchase contract to be valid and directed TMM to work with KC Southern in good faith to complete the sale.
"We, too, are pleased by the decision, which is another important step in our efforts to complete a transaction with KCS," TMM Chairman Jose Serrano said in a written release.
KC Southern ranks No. 16 on The Business Journal's list of area public companies
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