America's frontier plan verges on absurd
By Philip Sherwell in Derby Line, Vermont, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:17am BST 15/07/2007
Dividing line: Kathy Prue is in the US, while Mary Roy is in Canada
Straddling the US-Canadian border, the elegant granite edifice of the Haskell Library and Opera House has served as a symbol of cross-border amity since 1901.
Patrons from both sides of the border enter the building in America, but check out their books from the desk in Canada. And for next month's Frank Sinatra tribute in the auditorium, half the guests will be sitting in the United States as a performer croons on stage in Canada.
The neighbouring streets seamlessly link the village of Derby Line in the northeastern US state of Vermont and its sister community of Stanstead in Quebec. Families here are often split by what has long been regarded as one of the world's friendliest frontiers.
But this bucolic and sleepy corner of the world is now the latest - and rather implausible - front line in the war on terror as America tries to secure its borders in the post-September 11 world.
Border officials want to block the open streets to stop illegal crossings - to the anger of locals who for generations have hopped across the frontier without a second thought.
The official reason is to halt trafficking of illegal immigrants, but the backdrop is the growing US concern about the danger that terrorists might slip across its porous, and often ill-marked, 5,525-mile northern border.
Canada's more liberal immigration laws are viewed with suspicion by some in the Bush administration, especially as the country last year uncovered a terror plot in Toronto, hatched by a group of Muslim immigrants.
The joint American-Canadian International Border Enforcement Team has now asked officials in Derby Line and Stanstead to come up with proposals for blocking vehicle traffic.
"We are doing ourselves a disservice in the protection of our country and our citizens if we leave these streets open," said Rosendo Hinojosa, the acting border patrol chief. "This is a possible port of entry for terrorists and their weapons and we have to make sure it is not exploited."
But Keith Beadle, one of Derby Line's three village trustees and himself a former US customs inspector who lives on a street that would be blocked, calls the proposals an "over-reaction".
"Times have changed for sure, but the border patrol also has more manpower and technology than before. This measure would just push the problem into the countryside, which is harder to patrol," he said.
"If you give up a freedom like this, you'll never get it back. It seems that all people have to say now is 9/11 to justify a crackdown. And you are made to look un-American if you disagree."
The US border patrol caught 56,883 people trying to slip into America from Canada between 2001 and last year - most from countries where it is easier to obtain a Canadian visa than one for America.
Attention has focused on Derby Line since border agents pulled over two van drivers on the street next to the library recently and found 21 illegal immigrants, mainly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. On the very night earlier this month that locals gathered at the opera house to complain to border agents about the new plans, two human traffickers were caught with two illegal immigrants on a nearby street.
Road signs instruct drivers who cross the frontier here to head first to the local US and Canadian border posts, to register. Patrols enforce the policy, alerted to border crossings by closed circuit cameras that set off an alarm, but there is clearly scope for getting round the safeguards.
Under the new proposals, the roads would be blocked to vehicles - possibly by reinforced flower pots - forcing locals to detour to the nearby official crossing point.
The building is demarcated by a strip of black tape. Checking out books behind the front desk (just inside Canada), librarians Mary Roy and Kathy Prue are testament to how fused the two communities are - Mrs Roy is an American whose children were born in Canada; her friend is a Canadian whose children were born in the US.
"This is a tiny little place and people have got along just fine here for years," said Mrs Roy. "It really does strike people here as a bit over the top."
Even pinpointing the border is difficult. Halfway along a quiet residential street lined with manicured lawns and wood and brick homes, a US border patrolman could only tell The Sunday Telegraph that the international boundary was "somewhere down this road, but I'm not exactly sure where". 
) me cynical, but I think there are certain parties in our government who focus on the 'problem' with the Canadian border to both justify the inaction WRT and distract attention from fixing the very real problems we have on our southern border.
