Mexico Trucker Online Articles

Editorial – Roadblock to free trade – It’s time to comply with NAFTA and open U.S. highways to Mexican trucks

Josue Cruz, a driver for Transportes Olympic inaugurated the new Mexico Cross Border Pilot Program when he arrived in Laredo on his first trip to Garland Texas

Nearly 20 years after President Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, a key provision that grants Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways remains stalled. Staunch opposition from unions and consumer groups in this country, which argue that unsafe foreign trucks and inexperienced drivers put U.S. jobs and lives at risk, have successfully shut down even the most modest attempts to comply with NAFTA.

In October, the Obama administration tried again, with a pilot program granting three Mexican trucking firms limited access to U.S. roads. So far, just two carriers have sent trucks into the country — a small but positive development. But now, the Teamsters union and the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen have asked a federal judge in Washington to shut down the program because transportation officials failed to comply with national regulations that require environmental impact tests before starting any pilot program.

Their objections are specious, and old news. Both groups made the same sort of legal arguments when President George W. Bush announced plans to start a similar pilot program in 2001. And in 2004, the Supreme Court found that the Bush administration did not need to conduct environmental impact tests and that the U.S. could allow Mexican trucks across the border. The program was finally started in 2007 but came to a halt in 2009 when Congress pulled the funding.

If the Teamsters and other groups are so worried about safety and job security, they should work with the Obama administration to develop additional guidelines and tests that will assuage their concerns. The administration has already shown itself willing to collaborate by adopting some of their demands, such as requiring monitoring devices in all Mexican trucks as a way to track the number of hours drivers spend on the road, as well as mandatory drug testing and language proficiency rules — even though there is little reason to believe that Mexican drivers pose a greater hazard than Canadian truckers, who already have access to U.S. roads and are not required to meet similar standards. In fact, an 18-month study conducted during the Bush administration’s pilot program found that the safety records of Mexican truckers were comparable to those of their U.S. counterparts.

The United States can’t continue to violate its free-trade obligations. Mexico is too important a trade partner, and failure to meet our end of the bargain has already led to retaliation. In 2010, Mexico slapped hefty tariffs on nearly 100 U.S. products — including California wines, strawberries and oranges — totaling well over $2 billion. The U.S. signed on to NAFTA. Isn’t it time it made good on its word?

This editorial appeared in the January 15, 2012 edition of the LA TIMES

SA Express News Editorial – Take action on truck program – End a self-defeating trade war with Mexico over NAFTA provision

Let’s see if I’ve got this right. James P. Hoffa of the Teamsters and Todd Spencer of OOIDA are correct in their opinions of Mexican trucks and 1400 plus trade associations, newspaper editors and business groups are wrong? And the aforementioned duo “speak” for the “majority” of Americans? I think not.

The San Antonio Express News editorial board offered their opinion on the issue this morning.

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OOIDA first out of the gate responding to proposed Mexican Truck Agreement with the same old BULLSHIT

Todd Spencer – "You can't fix stupid"

As expected, Todd Spencer and OOIDA quickly released a statement opposing any effort by the FMCSA and the Obama administration to comply with out obligation under NAFTA. Our non compliance having cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs and a significant amount of market share due to the perfectly legal retaliatory tariffs Mexico imposed for our non compliance.

Here is OOIDA’s statement: (Our opinion appears in between the paragraphs)
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NAFTA compliance, finally / Obama will end 17-year ban on Mexican trucks

Safe Mexican carriers such as this one will soon be seen on US highways as the Obama administration does the right thing and fulfills our promises under NAFTA. The time for the lies, fear mongering and hysteria is over with.

BY UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL BOARD

The North American Free Trade Agreement was ratified by Congress almost 17 years ago. It’s about time the United States began honoring a key part of it. A sticking point in the treaty has been the provision allowing truckers from Mexico, Canada and the United States cross-border access to each nation’s highways.

The United States allowed Canadian truckers access, but kept out Mexican trucks. Democratic lawmakers claimed they were worried about “safety concerns” related to the Mexican trucks. But what they were really worried about was how best to cater to labor unions and address the Teamsters’ concerns that Mexican truckers represented unwelcome competition.
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Who will compensate Mexico for false swine flu reports?

The swine flu outbreak that has wrecked Mexico’s economy may become a case study in reckless journalism. It now turns out that it’s not clear whether the H1N1 pandemic originated in Mexico, as first reported, or in the United States.
Like most of you, I had taken it for granted that the disease started in Mexico. That’s what most press reports said in late April, when we saw the first headlines about this illness. Some radio and cable television presenters called it the “Mexican flu.”

So earlier this week, I found myself scratching my head when I read in a Pan American Health Organization press release that “the new virus, which emerged in Mexico and the United States in April,” has spread to 74 countries.

What do they mean by Mexico AND the United States, I asked myself. Are they saying that the new virus emerged in both countries simultaneously?

Minutes later, I called the Pan American Health Organization to ask whether that “AND” was an editing mistake, or intentional.

Daniel Epstein, a Pan American Health Organization spokesman, said that, “at this time, it’s not clear that this pandemic started in Mexico.” He added that reports that the disease originated in Mexico “are premature.”

At the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spokesman Joe Quimby confirmed that “no geographical location has been determined to be the point of origin of the current pandemic.” He added, “We may never know in which country it started.”

The lack of certainty as to where the pandemic started stems from the fact that hundreds of thousands of people cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day, making it hard to know where the virus came from. In addition, many healthy people without severe H1N1 symptoms may have not gone to a doctor, and their cases may therefore have gone undetected on either side of the border before the first cases were reported, health officials say.

But none of this stopped the usual crowd of hyperventilating anti-immigration — or rather, anti-Hispanic immigration — radio and cable television hotheads from pointing at Mexico as the unequivocal origin of the disease.

According to the Media Matters watchdog group, conservative-nationalist radio talk show host Michael Savage said on April 24, “Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico.”

In another example of irresponsible journalism cited by the watchdog group, Fox’s contributor Michelle Malkin wrote in her blog on April 25, “Hey, maybe we’ll finally get serious about borders now.” She added, “I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration.”

On April 27, CNN’s Lou Dobbs started his nightly show saying, “We begin with dire new warnings about the worsening outbreak of swine flu. This outbreak is spreading from Mexico to the United States and around the world.”

In the days that followed, many countries — including Cuba, Argentina and Ecuador — suspended all flights from Mexico. The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory recommending Americans to abstain from non business-related travel to Mexico. China stopped imports of pork from Mexico.

Tourism to Mexico plummeted. A friend told me he paid about $270, taxes included, round-trip from Miami to Mexico City in May, and the plane was half empty. The flu-related decline in tourism and exports will contribute to an officially-projected 5.5 percent drop in Mexico’s gross domestic product this year.

And now, many in the Mexican press are saying that the disease started in the United States. They cite, among other things, a May 2 article in Newsweek by Pulitzer prize-winning author Laurie Garrett.

The article, which says that it is impossible to pinpoint where the pandemic started, reports that there was a case of swine flu in the United States as early as 2005, when a 17-year-old boy who had been working in a Wisconsin pig slaughterhouse fell ill.

My opinion: Perhaps world health authorities will eventually conclude that the pandemic started in Mexico. But what if they don’t? What if they conclude that it started in Wisconsin or in California? Who will compensate the tens of thousands of Mexicans who lost their jobs or saw their incomes nosedive because of the collapse of the tourism industry?

I don’t have an answer for how this story should have been reported early on (although Garrett’s article should have shown us the way). But just as scientists are looking into the history of the H1N1 outbreak to learn how to better handle future pandemics, we in the media should look at how to handle these kinds of stories more responsibly in the future, and expose reckless charlatans for what they are.

By Andrés Oppenheimer, a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald, aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com

Why Ramos and Compean Should NOT be Pardoned

As you know, I’ve followed the case of Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos from the gitgo and my opinion, as I have stated here many times has not changed.

As my email has been flooded with links to people DEMANDING pardons for these two, and my disgust at the stupidity of these people rises, I sat here contemplating how to put in my dos centavos.

But someone else has taken the words from my mind and put them on the web. I’m going to use his words en todo, because I could not have said it better.

With full credit to STEPHEN LITTAU at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds

As the Bush era comes to a close, the list of last minute pardon requests are growing. Perhaps the loudest demand for pardon comes (mostly) from Conservatives who are angry that President Bush has not acted to pardon two Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. Those who demand the pardon claim that the agents were railroaded by an “overzealous” U.S. Attorney for “just doing their jobs” when the agents fired 15 shots, one of which hit a fleeing “drug smuggling illegal immigrant” Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks. If you Google “Ramos and Compean” you will find an endless number of articles which make some variation of this argument.

If this were a case of two Border Patrol Agents “just doing their jobs” acting in self defense, then I too would be demanding a pardon for these men. Inconvenient facts which are left out of almost all of these articles point to exactly why Ramos and Compean should NOT be pardoned. A January 29, 2007 article written by Andrew McCarthy for The National Review (not what I would consider a left-leaning or open borders type publication) offers a compelling counterpoint challenging the heroic and mythical image being bandied about of the two Border Patrol Agents:

The preponderance of the evidence established that Aldrete-Davila was unarmed. Besides Compean and Ramos, there were several other agents on the scene. None of them believed Aldrete-Davila posed a threat to their safety; none, other than the two defendants drew their weapons; and Compean and Ramos neither took cover nor alerted their fellow agents to do so.

More to the point, Compean admitted to investigators early on that the smuggler had raised his hands, palms open, in an attempt to surrender. This jibed not only with Aldrete-Davila’s account but with that of another Border Patrol agent. Compean opted not to take surrender, not to place the smuggler under arrest so he could be prosecuted.

On that score, for those over-heatedly analogizing the border to a battlefield, it is worth noting that even under the law of war, quarter must be given when it is sought. Compean, to the contrary, tried to strike Aldrete-Davila with the butt of his shotgun. But it turns out the agent was as hapless as he was malevolent. In the assault, he succeeded only in losing his own balance. The smuggler, naturally, took off again, whereupon Compean unleashed an incompetent fuselage — missing Aldrete-Davila with all fourteen shots.

It was only after the surrender attempt that Ramos opened fire as the unarmed smuggler neared the border. Defending his decision to bring the case, U.S. attorney Sutton later explained: “Border Patrol training allows for the use of deadly force when an agent reasonably fears imminent bodily injury or death. An agent is not permitted to shoot an unarmed suspect who is running away.” The fact that Aldrete-Davila was a drug-dealer — something the agents may have suspected but had not yet confirmed at the time they were shooting at him — did not justify the responsive use of potentially deadly force under standard law-enforcement rules of engagement.

Even Ramos and Compean’s supporters acknowledge that the agents shot at a fleeing suspect rather than a suspect trying to cause injury or death. Do they really want to make every law enforcement officer in the country judge, jury, and executioner and grant the right to use lethal force against a fleeing supect*? After all, forcing law enforcement to obey the law makes their jobs “more difficult”!

McCarthy continues to perhaps the most damning part of Ramos and Compean’s actions – the cover-up:

Once Aldrete-Davila was down from Ramos’s shot to the backside, they decided, for a second time, not to grab him so he could face justice for his crimes. As they well knew, an arrest at that point — after 15 shots at a fleeing, unarmed man who had tried to surrender — would have shone a spotlight on their performance. So instead, they exacerbated the already shameful display.

Instead of arresting the wounded smuggler, they put their guns away and left him behind. But not before trying to conceal the improper discharge of their firearms. Compean picked up and hid his shell-casings rather than leaving the scene intact for investigators. Both agents filed false reports, failing to record the firing of their weapons though they were well aware of regulations requiring that they do so. Because the “heroes” put covering their tracks ahead of doing their duty, Aldrete-Davila was eventually able to limp off to a waiting car and escape into Mexico.

Whaaaat? But I thought this “drug smuggling illegal immigrant” was a threat to national security? If the agents’ actions were justified, why would they not arrest the suspect and why would they feel the need to cover-up their actions? Were they afraid that the “overzealous” Sutton had an axe to grind against the Border Patrol?

Toward the beginning of his article, McCarthy points out that Sutton had an impressive record of prosecuting coyotes and drug smugglers and supporting the efforts of the Border Patrol. There have even been other cases on Sutton’s watch where agents used lethal force which resulted in fatalities. Because these agents responded appropriately in these cases – using deadly force when there were legitimate threats to the lives of others on the part of the suspects, Sutton’s office did not pursue charges.

On January 17, 2007, Sutton published a press release on official U.S. Department of Justice Letterhead in an attempt to separate “Myth vs. Reality” regarding this case. Within this document contains perhaps the best argument for why the president should not pardon these men:

These agents were found guilty by a unanimous jury in a United States District Court after a trial that lasted more than two and a half weeks.

The two agents were represented by experienced and aggressive trial attorneys, both of whom vigorously challenged the Government’s evidence through cross examination.

Both agents told their stories from the witness stand and had full opportunities to explain their version of events and to offer their own evidence. The jury heard everything including the defendants’ claims of self defense. The problem for Agents Compean and Ramos is that the jury did not believe their stories because they were not true.

Being government agents, Ramos and Compean probably received a better legal defense than the average criminal defendant. They had their day in court and they lost. Their legal team appealed the convictions and they lost again. This is hardly the miscarriage of justice that the pro pardon people would have us believe; this is an example of the system actually working the way it’s supposed to!

Ramos and Compean’s supporters do have at least a couple of somewhat legitimate gripes though. One being the length of the sentences (11 and 12 years) and the other being use of testimony on the part of a criminal who has something to gain (in this case, Aldrete-Davila himself). But these complaints should not be directed at Sutton or the trial judge.

The blame for the length of the sentence belongs properly to the mandatory minimum sentencing law passed by congress which requires a ten year sentence for unlawful discharge of a firearm while committing a crime (this ten year sentence is in addition to whatever other crimes the defendant is convicted of). While I believe that the sentences are appropriate in this case, I am opposed to mandatory minimum sentencing laws on principle. Judges should have the discretion to decide the appropriate punishment not a one-size-fits-all penalty regardless of any unique circumstances in a unique event.

And allowing Aldrete-Dalvia to testify against Ramos and Compean with full immunity? This is standard operating procedure. Prosecutors use informants who have a motive to testify against defendants every day in this country. Why should we be surprised that Sutton would use Aldrete-Dalvia as his star witness? If this approach is appropriate for the average defendant then it is certainly appropriate when those sworn to serve and protect abuse the public’s trust.

But don’t expect Conservatives to start demanding a repeal of mandatory minimum sentencing laws nor expect them to consider criminal justice reform. To them this case is not about two rogue law enforcement agents but about immigration and drug policy. The facts do not matter because the guys with the badges are always the good guys and their judgment is better than due process of law.

Certainly there are many miscarriages of justice which could be rectified with a presidential pardon but the case of Ramos and Compean is not such a case…no matter where one stands on immigration and drug policy. Hopefully neither President Bush nor President-Elect Barack Obama will give in to the mindless demands of this misguided and vocal mob.

* Think about it: if you surrendered to law enforcement and one of the officers try to hit you with the butt of a shotgun, do you think you might try to run away?

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What Steven doesn’t also mention is the opportunity these two had to plead to an 18 month sentence, which they refused to accept. The thinking was that they would be exonerated. They rolled the dice and lost.

One reason, in my opinion, why these two have been ignored by President Bush is how this has been played in the media. Everyone DEMANDING, he pardon these two criminals. Accusing President Bush and his father of everything from being in bed with the cartels to being the puppets of Mexico. This is a lesson in how not to get the attention for your agenda.

Into the New Year 2009

We have a New Year before us. Soon to have a new President that folks are pinning their hopes and dreams on, an economy in the crapper, the nativists or whining and dreaming of a White America, and new challenges await!

The original intent of this site was to debunk all the bullshit about Mexico and the Cross Border Pilot Program, and for that, we were extraordinarily successful. As foretold, what the protectionists predicted would be chaos and calamity, has gone on for 16 months without a hitch. Told you so!

The future of the program? Who knows, and the truth be known, I continue not to care one way or the other. It hasn’t effected my life, my job, my company in the least, nor has it impacted anyone in the trucking industry on this side of the border.

The opposition has been quiet about it since the election, mostly. Perhaps they’re being smug thinking that with Obama in office, it is a slam dunk to have it shut down. Maybe, maybe not! Whatever happens though, there will continue to be more than 800 Mexican companies with full access to the US. The Mexican companies who participated in the program have positioned themselves to be able to continue to have unrestricted access to the US, not under the Cross Border Rules, which were more stringent than normal DOT rules. Most of them have established US subsidiaries.

The losers? American companies who have invested into opening up markets south of the border.

But this year, I’m kicking back a little more. Spending more time in Monterrey with the family who I have neglected severely, (Sorry CeCe)

I’m planning to do more traveling south of the border as time and money permits. After reading my friend Richard Grabman’s new book God’s Gachupines and Gringos, there are new places I want to discover and old places I have been that I want to see through new eyes and the new knowledge I acquired from the book.

The new site design, as of today, I’ve received more than 120 emails complimenting me on it. Thanks to all. I was tired of the old look, and wanting something more minimal. I think I’ll keep this for now.

So the Mexican issue is dead for the most part. The 9th Circuit has yet to rule on the frivoulous lawsuit OOIDA, Teamsters and others filed that was supposed to be on the “fast track”.

I plan on making this more of a personal diary, of course keeping the Mexican flavor since that is my adopted home. But I want to keep it towards more of a human interest side instead of getting too political. 

With more than 5000 hits a day on the site, I’ve been doing something right and plan on continuing to do that.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous 2009. Stranger things have happened you know

U.S.-Mexico border fence is deja vu all over again

One of the most interesting things about years passing and thinking that we progress from year to year is finding out how little some things really change.

An Associated Press article out of Washington that appeared in the May 21, 1942, El Paso Herald-Post. The headline

“Senate Okays $50,000 For E.P. Border Fence.”

“The senate voted $50,000 today to build a 25-mile long barbed-wire fence along the Mexican border west of El Paso, although Minority Leader McNary questioned the wisdom of using essential materials for such a project.

How does this jibe with our good neighbor policy toward Mexico?’ McNary asked when the item came up as an amendment to a $425,703,000 appropriations bill for the State, Justice and Commerce departments and the federal judiciary.

We want to keep the good neighbor policy on both sides of the border,’ retorted Senator McCarran.

Is the fence supposed to keep out smugglers or cattle?’ McNary asked.

Smugglers,’ McCarran said.

Well,’ said McNary, shaking his head, ‘it must be quite a fence.’

The Senate passed the measure, carrying $204,625,000 more than the House voted, and returned it to the House.

The fence has been sought by immigration and customs authorities for years. It will simplify patrolling the border.”

That was 66 years ago. Wonder what the headlines will read in another 66 years?

_{Charlie Edgren / El Paso Times Staff}