Coming soon to U.S.: Mexican customs office

wnd ^ | June 5, 2006 | Jerome R. Corsi

[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.

[catholicfreeper]

The Kansas City Council last year approved a $2.5 million loan to SmartPort to build the 26,000-square foot customs facility on city-owned land in the West Bottoms east of Liberty Street and mostly south of Interstate 670.

Nonprofit SmartPort would lease the site from the city and repay the loan over 10 years with user fees paid by international shippers.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/local/14595814.htm?source=rss&channel=kansascity_l



So its a loan. Corsi is again a little messy with the facts.

[warchild9]

...legal...there's that word again...

We've hundreds of thousands of illegals working here in NC. A couple of days ago, four of them just wrecked a company truck out on Hwy 64 near my old house, nearly killing a bunch of commuters.

The Highway Patrol let them go with a ticket. The local newsies id'ed them as illegals.

...a provision in NAFTA allows Mexican citizens to own and operate trucking companies in the US, which is fine...and the currently allowed provisions of NAFTA II (which are on the books) allow Mexican trucks and drivers to operate within the US already...they're coming, all right, legally.

The holdup was that US safety rules were disallowed for these trucks, and some people complained about that. Imagine!

[1rudeboy]

. . . legal . . . there's that word again . . . .

Indeed. [bursting out in laughter--you are just funnin' me, right?]

Actually, I tried to warn people about this (and the takeover of the US gypsy trucking industry legally by Mexicans via treaty) a couple of years ago.

No treaty. Not legally. Three strikes, and I'm outta' here.

[warchild9]

I just called downstairs to the Mrs. (who wrote the article last year). She says the Mexican driver thing was a non-legislated "regulation" allowing Mexicans to drive across the border; it had nothing to do with the treaty. I was wrong.

The effect is the same. They're a'comin'...

[1rudeboy]

A Mexican cannot set-up shop here under NAFTA. NAFTA allows for Mexican trucks to cross the border and make deliveries here, or pass through to Canada. International, yes. Intranational, no. Furthermore, all Mexican trucks must comply with the same safety and insurance regulations that their U.S. and Canadian counterparts must follow. I think you've been drinking too much of the Teamster hooch, or smoking too much of the Public Citizen greenleaf.

The only way a Mexican national can come to the U.S. (and my immigration law is somewhat hazy) in order to set-up a trucking company is to demonstrate to the immigration authorities that 1. he provides a unique service in demand (not), and 2. he has statutorily-set boatload of cash to invest (not). In other words, there is no legal way to do it, other than buying stock in an already-existing American trucking company.

In sum, you have been deliberately led to confuse cross-border trucking with trucking in general. Whoever did it succeeded mightily.

[1rudeboy]

Up until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2004 (I believe), Mexican trucks were allowed to operate in a 20 mile (I believe) buffer zone next to the border.

I lost track of the issue since, but the Supreme Court ruling allows Mexican trucks into the interior of the U.S. That is still a far cry from performing the same task as our gypsy independents. The various special-interest groups aligned against the issue were the unions and the Greens. I remember being bombarded in 2004 with their propaganda in the press ("allowed to operate," sounds sinister doesn't it?--Mexicans will be doing the Detroit-Chicago run!). Don't fall for it.

[warchild9]

I'll worry about it when Lou Dobbs starts shrieking about the latest form of invasion. I figure it'll happen when enough corporate suits find a way to use it to make a biiiiig profit.

/just funnin' about Lou Dobbs

[Ben Ficklin]

NAFTA: Transportation Related Provisions

[warchild9]

The Mrs. said that the trucking provisions weren't in the treaty. They were binding regulations added later. That's what I mixed up...and that's why she gets paid to be the journalist, and I don't...

[Ben Ficklin]

The link in my above reply says that the provisions were in NAFTA.

[1rudeboy]

Thanks. I found some stuff at Heritage and elsewhere that claimed that U.S. trucks were allowed into Mexico as late as 2001, but then Vicente Fox threatened to close his border to our trucks if we didn't open ours to his. I cannot find anything that indicates the current state of this dispute. I know that it hasn't gone to the WTO, so it has either been resolved or is in the process.

[1rudeboy]

I think everyone might be correct here. The trucking provisions are not in the text of the treaty itself, but the treaty might have one or more codicils that specifically address the subject. So for someone like me, that means it's not in the treaty, but for someone like a journalist, it's not worth the time or effort to explain the difference.

[Ben Ficklin]

There was always cross-border trucking until 1981 when Mexico stopped it to protect their trucking industry. The US retaliated.

As for the dispute, Mexico took the US into arbitration and was awarded 2 billion per year early in 2001.

Final Report of of the Arbitration Panel

Although Mexico is entitled to sanctioned retaliation to the tune of two billion per year, and it has been a hot topic in the Mexican Congress, they have as yet retaliated.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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.

Trans-Texas Corridor PING!

[Diddle E. Squat]

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.

Corsi is appearing more and more to be a good fit with World Nut Daily, drama queens who take a kernal of truth, mix in lots of tinfoil, and extrapolate something innocuous into a dastardly secret conspiracy.

Some actual facts: Virginia has had an inland port for years at Front Royal, VA, which is the concept Kansas City is trying to implement. So are Dallas, San Antonio, and other municipalities. Basically a paperwork port (instead of an actual dock on the water) that allows goods to be shipped in and warehoused without paying import taxes until the goods are shipped off from the inland port to its final destination. A way for inland cities to try and capture some of the warehousing and repackaging opportunities that were traditionally located in coastal ports, Especially useful when high dollar real estate on the west coast could be put to higher and better uses than giant light industrial warehousing. Also a concept that speeds up the importation process.

KCS is an American railroad that bought a Mexican railroad and is now in the process of improving its US track so as to run Mexican import trains into the Midwest, Southeast, and Northeast. All of its US lines are unionized, and they make far more money carrying the traffic on their rails than letting other trucking companies move it. So any transfers in Monterrey are either temporary because of current lack of US rail capacity or time-sensitive where rail is too slow.

As noted, west coast ports are reaching capacity and congested. Mexico (and the expanding Prince Rupert port in Canada) is the next natural place for adding port capacity, because they have ports that are underutilized and have room to expand. Not to mention they don't have enviro groups successfully tying up needed infrastructure projects for years with all kinds of lawsuits. And yes, they are non-union, so the $100,000+ per year featherbedding longshoremen can't hold the US hostage like they tried to do a few years ago. Imports from Asia will continue to increase, and they have to come into the US somewhere.

[anymouse]

NAFTA ping

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[TXnMA]

... drama queens who take a kernal of truth, mix in lots of tinfoil, and extrapolate something innocuous into a dastardly secret conspiracy.

Are you simply incapable of posting without producing an as hominem rant?

[Diddle E. Squat]

You mean "Ad hominem"? Methinks my description simply hit too close to home for you.

Some of your recent posts in your calm, rational, and logic-only style, free from hyperbole and drama queening:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643272/posts?page=30#30

"You are counting on Mexico (which can't/won't even control its marauding hordes of invaders into the US) to cooperate and build ports and a connector to RINO Perry's sewer pipe to nowhere?"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1643272/posts?page=29#29

"And that will be the economic death of many rural counties and towns that now depend on tapping into that "on-off" nature of the present highways for their primary cash flow. The Trash-Texas Con Job is designed to turn rural Texas into "Drive-over Country" -- with the through-flushed traffic leaving no more economic benefit outside the big cities than do the airliners that now fly over us here in "Flyover Country"! And for that "privilege", rural Texas is supposed to surrender up to a foreign scam one square mile of taxable land for every four or five miles of this RINO RIPOFF!!!"

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1642977/posts?page=15#15

You just showed your true colors. Are you also a NAMBLA member?

Interesting that you earlier expressed a somewhat similar opinion to mine about World Nut Daily:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1640215/posts?page=56#56

Yep, as long as WND had Clintoon as a target, they seemed to stay on message -- and I was a faithful reader. After that, WND went downhill at an accelerating pace. It's been a long while since I've even had the site bookmarked for occasional check-ins...

[Libertina]

Ah, government acting the OPPOSITE of what the people want. Get them OUT of office at the first opportunity.