This is not and cannot truly be about safety. Why? Because, as the author pointed out, there are and have been Mexican trucking companies operating in the States for years now, and that hasn't been a problem; furthermore, the pilot program was designed as a test, and the Mexican companies passed the test. Dangerous Mexican trucks are no more a worry than dangerous American or Canadian trucks: have you honestly never had to go through a roadside safety inspection?

If you have driven extensively in Mexico, you surely understand that it is much less neat and organized than the States and Canada. In Mexico: turns are tighter, lanes are narrower, pavement is highly variable, lighting is spotty, signage can be iffy, speed limits and passing zones are more like suggestions than laws, and there are unpainted speed bumps on the highway. If a person can drive a long-haul truck in Mexico, then driving one in the States will be a cake-walk. If you're going to be concerned about safety on the road, be concerned for the American driving south, not the Mexican driving north.

Mexico has mechanisms in place to ensure the safety of its truck drivers; Canada does too. Denying one while allowing the other is not a level-headed approach. The drayage sysem is an unnecessary waste of resources and time; the only plausible reason it has continued to operate for this long has to be the Teamsters' fear of losing jobs in an unnecessary sector. Here in Wichita, we have many people who get paid big bucks to do almost nothing in the airplane industry. The unions would pitch a fit if they were to be fired, just as they would pitch a fit if drayage were eliminated. This is the Teamsters using scare tactics to force America to allow inefficiency in its transportation industry, nothing more.

If you despise Mexicans, if you despise Americans who move to Mexico, if you despise undocumented immigrants — fine. But none of that is a good reason for supporting or opposing a piece of transportation legislation.

It's only a win win deal for the big companies but I'm also aware that most mexican trucks are death traps waiting to happen and I'm also aware of the lack of enforce-ment or ability to moniter, check, verify or know the back-ground history of most mexican truck drivers or and the general public as well ?? I do not want that type of driver or equipment with a question-able record shareing the highway in my country with my family out on that same highway going about their bussiness n end up being killed only to have that mexican driver sent back to mexico with nothing done to him and a week later he's back out on my highways again with a different CDL ??????????

These mexican carriers that have been running this pilot program this last year were hand picked with newer equipment and are not anything like the everyday mex truck or driver .. Also they are not checked as closely as we are ?? Only a small % get's checked at the border !!!I have ""NO"" intrest in driveing south of the border with the corruption that goes on or being robbed or shot by a gang down there or my equipment damaged or stolen ect ect ???? Even if a person wanted to run down there after the federallies realize that all they haft to do is open a weigh station and collect fines it will be a total nightmare if you survive everything else ???

Outside of America on a Mexican Highway with a Mexican Weigh Station full of Federallies ???????????? GET REAL !!!!!!

Lopsided "free" trade has already put thousands of farmers out of business in Mexico and now Central America — We kept our farm subsidies, they had to stop theirs — and "free" trade that says trucks can only cross the border one way is no fairer.

People seem to forget that Mexico and points south are real places. I've spent part of my life living there, too, and not because of the lower cost of living. Doesn't make me a traitor, just broadens the mind a bit. People are just people, my brothers and sisters before we belong to any race or country. Their lives are just as real as mine, and a whole lot harder.

Every Mexican I know well enough to discuss this with has been absolutely clear from Day 1 that NAFTA's main purpose was to screw Mexico to the wall (most of them too polite to put it that way). In other words, for the US to use Mexico for profit — and, secondarily, as a source of cheap labor. Though that's not exactly written into the treatly, it's an inevitable result.

Any time someone suggests letting up on the vise even a little bit, there's this chorus of "Ouch, we're dying!" from north of the border. Please.

And I am really sick and tired of the "Stay there and make it better" line. There are people who have the resources to do this — most of them educated and/or exceptionally courageous. Changing a hierarchical society from the bottom is a ticket to an early grave, in a lot of places. Lots of reform-minded people die young, at the moment most notably journalists, non-corrupt police officers, and working women.