HJR 48-ACCESS ACROSS UNITED STATES/CANADA BORDER CHAIRMAN MACKIE announced HJR 48 to be up for consideration. MR. SCOTT PETSEL, Aide to Representative Gail Phillips, sponsor, HJR 48 relating to the free flow of people and fair trade of goods and services across the border between the U.S. and Canada. Section 110 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 calls for the implementation of an automated entry/exit control system to record all entries to and departures from the Unites States regardless of the person's nationality, regardless of the location of entry, and regardless of the method of entry. These controls are slated to be in place by March 2001. The resolution is specific to Canadians and the borders between the United States and Canada. Currently, if you are a traveler coming from Canada, you are required to stop at the U.S. border and show them your "papers." As you leave the country, you're not required to stop at the U.S. border crossing station. Under Section 110, all travelers would have to stop in both directions and fill out detailed paperwork regarding personal information and trip details. This would create quite a traffic jam at several of the border crossing stations. It also goes against years of cooperative agreements between the United States and Canada including the Shared Border Accord of 1995 and the Canadian/US Partnership Forum. The resolution is a variation of one passed by the Council of State Governments West late last year. HJR 48 specifically calls for U.S. Congress to amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to provide for the exemption of Canadians from requirements of Section 110 at all land border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. As background, MR. PETSEL said, Canadians spent a total of $7.3 billion dollars in the United States last year. Bilateral trade between the countries was $397 billion in 1998. In 1998 with Alaska alone, Canadians traded a total of $492 million worth of goods. Other states have adopted resolutions of varying levels of support for the repeal of Section 110 or the amendment to exempt Canadians from Section 110 from the Act of 1996. Also, on the federal level, there has been a lot of actions in various Congresses of the past to either call for the repeal of Section 110 or the exemption of land border crossing from Section 110. A recent update from Congressman Young's office says that a bipartisan group is working right now on an agreement on how to approach the Section 110 issue with the interest of increasing our capacity at borders to facilitate the free flow of tourism and trade. He asked for the committee's support. SENATOR LEMAN moved to pass CSHJR 48(RLS) from committee with individual recommendations. SENATOR KELLY said that he has some trouble with this. He thought the U.S. should be strengthening its borders as opposed to weakening them. He didn't think that most of our Canadian friends would be a problem, but there were other people who get into this country through Canada. He probably wouldn't support this legislation. MR. PETSEL said the resolution does nothing to change the current requirements. It doesn't lessen them, but it doesn't add control requirements. In part, the resolution asks for support to exempt Canadians from land border crossings between the U.S. and Canada, not other borders and not other nationalities. There were no objections to moving the bill from committee and it was so ordered.