Posted on 02/09/2007 7:06:35 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
The murky diplomatic status of a proposed Mexican customs clearinghouse in Kansas City has gotten murkier.
Since last spring, local officials and the Washington office of Sen. Kit Bond all have insisted that the matter was moving through government channels.
But U.S. State Department spokesman Eric Watnik said that the agency has never been formally asked to consider the proposal.
“It’s off the radar screen,” said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security. Border Protection was engaged in the early planning and was widely thought to have endorsed the project and moved it along.
“It never got to the point of submitting the paperwork to the State Department,” Anthony said. “It’s not a matter of wanting to or not wanting to. It’s not on anybody’s front burner.
“It might be the Mexican government isn’t pushing. I don’t know,” he said. “It was a hot issue about a year and half ago, but we haven’t been pushed for anything. Somebody’s got to be pushing it.”
Local officials close to the project expressed surprise that the process has stalled.
“I find that amazing,” said Kansas City Councilman George D. Blackwood Jr., a director of the city’s nonprofit Mexico Business Development Corp. and president of the North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., which fosters trade and transportation ties with Mexico and Canada.
“If this is true, I can’t imagine it,” Blackwood said.
At one time, Kansas City SmartPort Inc., a nonprofit coalition of shippers, warehouse operators and others, had hoped by mid-2006 to have the facility built and leased to Mexican authorities on city-owned land near Kemper Arena.
The State Department’s Circular 175 review and approval process determines whether such an arrangement with another nation must proceed under a formal treaty requiring congressional approval, or as a less formal trade agreement.
SmartPort President Chris Gutierrez, who has been the driving force behind the three-year effort, said the last word from Bond’s office to SmartPort and other local interests was that the project was undergoing C-175 scrutiny.
Bond spokeswoman Shana Marchio would say only: “The project is working its way through the process.
“Senator Bond has monitored the progress of the SmartPort project and facilitated talks with the appropriate federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and the Department of State. … While there has been some delay due to the new government in Mexico, Senator Bond hopes to see continued progress.”
Under the proposed agreement, Mexico-bound American and Canadian truck freight would be inspected by U.S. and Mexican border authorities in Kansas City and then sealed for movement directly to Mexican destinations, with fewer costly delays at border choke points like Laredo, Texas.
Mexican shippers and deep-water port operators in Manzanillo, Lazaro Cardenas and other Pacific ports would then complete the trade link to Asia and other destinations.
The proposal still faces other hurdles.
•SmartPort has been unable to obtain a clear lease to the 5-acre West Bottoms site because the city is bound by its long-term lease of that land to the American Royal.
Gutierrez said SmartPort remains hopeful. “We’re not looking at alternative sites,” he said.
•The federal government in Mexico changed hands in December, and Gutierrez said new players involved in the Kansas City project may not be up to speed.
Gutierrez said he’s seen no lessening of interest on Mexico’s part.
•Diplomatic talks could be sticking over an emerging Mexican priority. At an international trade conference in Kansas City last December, Hector Marquez Solis, Mexico’s NAFTA minister in Washington, said his nation would push for a counterpart U.S. customs clearing operation on Mexican soil that would similarly hasten the flow of Mexican goods across the border to U.S. and Canadian markets.
Until that point, the Kansas City project had been seen as a one-way deal for goods headed to Mexico. But Marquez said “it has to be two-way” to ease border delays on both sides.
“Kansas City is an alternative only if trucks can go directly to their destinations and not stop at the border,” he said at the time.
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Nothing like mainlining illegals into the country.
And drugs.
Help me out here. Are you suggesting illegal aliens and drugs will be cleared by Mexican Customs for export to Mexico in Kansas City before being re-imported into the U.S.?
Yendo a la Ciudad de Kansas. La Ciudad de Kansas aquí yo vengo. Ellos han conseguido a algunas mujeres pequeñas locas allí y yo soy gonna me consigue uno.
Whats to prevent all manner of illegal and dangerous stuff from being dropped off before it gets to KC?
Bond spokeswoman Shana Marchio would say only: "The 'project' is working its way through 'the process' ".
[Wink, wink]
This is all part of the NAFTA MexAmeriCan highway system. The tollway utilizing Interstate 35 Corridor starts at the Texas/Mexico border. I know our friends in Texas are fighting the project because it involves foreign companies operating the toll roads, and the project bypasses a lot of the normal commerce that normally thrives when a super highway passes through an area. Because of limited access, since the highway is designated an "international" zone, all of the unchecked containers and freight have to go through a final customs inspection (enter the KC facility) before the freight can leave the corridor.
That freight includes illegal immigrants, possible suitcase nukes, drugs, and everything else we do not need in America. This also pretty much makes obsolete border patrol customs checks. So the superhighway pretty much opens the borders. And that violates our sovergn status as a nation. We have to have well defined borders to stop the flow of security risks. A international zone highway that slices America in Half is a threat in more ways than one.
Weekly overflights by Nancy Pilosi????
There's no way this can proceed without at least a $375 million cost overrun. After all, it's BUILDINGS, ya know, those are VERY hard to build. Fences, floodlights on tall poles, parking lots and those lumpy concrete things that have to be installed and white paint stripes...these are enormous technological leaps that cannot be simply legislated into existence. Benches, desks, telephones, secure cafeterias....all the infrastructure needed. Warehouses, and monorails connecting the warehouses will be required. Plus, an environmental study concerning the endangered Kansas molerat will be required, with the attendant molerat bypass overpasses to prevent the 12-lane access road from interfering with the molerats' migration route. That's at least $45 million extra right there. Lastly, since the site will put some number of acres of corn = ethanol production out of production, several silos will have to be built to store the corn that won't be harvested, plus a fund from which to pay depletion subsidies will have to be established and bonds sold by Goldman Sachs to pay subsidy royalties on non-produced corn not stored in the empty silos. Once they get all the above figured out, construction should proceed apace.
Huh? Of course they have a financial stake in this.
Does that help? They do not want to have to stop at the border. They want free access to the U.S.
Weekly overflights by Nancy Pilosi????
So what's nancy going to be flying in, a B-2? No, wait, the B-2 barely holds two people.
And if she gets the plane she wants, what's to keep her from only one flight a week? Or only going to SF?
Will he road from the Mexican border to Kansas City be completely a controlled access with checkpoints at all exists and entrances to assure that they will proceed to Kansas City to check in?
Please remove me from ping list.
Thanks.
Since they're nonfprofit, we taxpayers are subsidizing this group. It's a grand plan....when citizens are force to pay for the demise of their country, so these transnational corporations can gain a throttle-hold on our economy, isn't it?
Supposed to be, but when did that stop anybody? It just adds several hundred miles to our poorly protected borders. They probably won't even put up the interstate style chanlink fences or sound barrier walls along the highway.
So all those U.S. Customs agents stationed overseas don't exist?
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