A high-ranking U.S. immigration official revealed yesterday there are no plans to enforce the law that comes into effect Oct. 1 that requires Canadians to check in at Customs before entering and leaving the States.
Curtis Aljets, district director with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), said its border offices didn’t have the personnel nor computer system to handle all the paper work.
Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Control Act requires the INS to develop, by Sept. 30, an automated entry and exit control system to document every alien–including Canadians–arriving and leaving the country.
The purpose of this section, which received little attention when the act passed Sept. 30, 1996, was to develop a system that would help the INS track and locate immigrants who overstay their visas.
“I don’t know of anything the INS could do to implement this,” Aljets said from St. Paul, Mn. yesterday. “As far as I know, we’re not prepared to implement that at this time.”
Aljets added a number of governors whose states border Canada have been working to exempt Canadians from the law, including Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson.
They argued Section 110 would lead to significant delays and major back-ups at border crossings, which could seriously harm the economies of border states.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
