I have heard arguments on both sides of this issue.  I find this to be a very simple situation.  Sen. Cornyn from Texas-R tries very hard to make the case that trucks from Canada, Mexico, and the United States should all be treated the same.  Now I consider myself a Republican but I am not ashamed to say that Sen. Cornyn is dead wrong, as is our esteemed President when it comes to border issues.  It seems to me, more and more everyday, that the Republican Party is trying to sell our Great Nation into a North American Union.  This is a good thing for North America, but would tear the United States down to the point of being unrecognizable.     

            Ok, let’s take a look at the way our neighbors to the North and South go about their day to day business. 

            Canada is a flourishing democracy.  They have a stable economy, adequate health care, and government corruption is minimal.  The Canadian government is similar to ours.  I know people who go on vacation in many parts of Canada.  They go skiing, fishing, hunting or just visiting the cities and towns.  In many ways Canada is like America.  The standard of living is very similar to ours.  People get up every morning and prepare themselves for their respective work days.  They finish the day and do some of the same things that we do.  They enjoy baseball, football, basketball and other sports that we relate to.  Outside of an accent and the way they say ooot instead of out you could sit down in a bar and not even realize that they were not American. 

            Yes, that may be a little bit of an over simplification but it is not all that far off.  Our nations may have disagreed on certain political issues over the last few decades that I have been alive, but we agree on more issues than we disagree on. 

            Mexico wants very much to be like the America and Canada, but they have some pretty big obstacles to overcome before they can emulate the aforementioned countries.  Sen. Dorgan made his point very clear and understandable.  Sen. Dorgan, and it is killing me to say this and agree with a Democrat, was absolutely correct.  Mexico does not have the same safety standards in place.  There are no laws in place to regulate how many hours a driver can drive and how many hours he must than rest.  I have heard rumors that truckers in Mexico have been known to drive 48 hours straight, with the help of methamphetamine, to finish a run quicker. 

            Opening the highways up to these truckers will do nothing more than take our highway safety back to the 1970’s when the same things were common place on our own roads.  Today a driver has to keep a log, and can lose his or her license for falsifying log entries.  A lot of this has been simplified through GPS and computer technology.  I have a hard time believing that the money is now spent installing the same equipment into trucks owned by Mexican trucking companies. 

            Beyond the issues of highway safety comes the notion that a Federal Government that cannot or will not build a fence to secure our border is going to go about inspecting enough Mexican trucks to ensure that the coyotes and drug smugglers do not take advantage of the opportunity presented to them.  Think about that for a minute.  Does anyone really believe that truck loads of Mexicans looking to avoid that long trek through the deserts in southwestern America will not come up with enough money to make it interesting for a trucker that can drive further into America?  Does anyone really think that a system wrought with corruption will turn itself around so that it can drive deeper into America?  I believe that the coyotes of today will be the Mexican trucking moguls of tomorrow.  And with the stories of coyotes sneaking Middle Easterners into America, because they pay more, will become more commonplace and not be sensational enough to make local let alone national news in the not so distant future.

            How many Canadians are lining up at border check points in mass to make a mad dash down the highway to a better life?  I don’t think many.  They have a good way of life up north, outside of the snow.  It was a common occurrence in the early to mid 1990’s when I was stationed at Camp Pendleton in California.  I remember the news covering a horde of Mexicans with an estimated size of four to five thousand massing on the Mexican size of the border.  They were milling around the cars that were waiting to be inspected to come in to the United States.  All at once the crowd began to run down Interstate 5 heading north, they knew that it was hard enough to catch five of a group of thirty, there was no way that the Border Patrol was going to catch even 100 of them.  Not bad odds.  The funniest part of that incident to me was the fact that San Diego news helicopters were covering the story for over an hour before the race down I5 began. And we still could not close down the highway.