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It is amazing that, with unemployment unacceptably high, the Obama Administration is pushing a plan that will cost U.S. jobs and make highway driving for Americans more dangerous and less pleasant. Obama wants to admit Mexican trucks to drive on all U.S. highways and roads. Congress made its wishes emphatically clear in 2007 when it voted to continue the ban on Mexican trucks. The House passed the ban by 411 to 3 and the Senate by 75 to 23. Even then-Senator Obama voted for the ban. Another ban was included in the 2009 omnibus funding bill, which President Obama signed in 2009. A Rasmussen poll in 2009 found that 66% of Americans opposed letting Mexican trucks cross the border and carry their loads on American highways, and only 19% of Americans say the Congress should let in Mexican trucks. Mexican trucks are known to be overweight and lacking in safety regulations we consider essential. Mexico doesn't have national databases that track drivers' records, background checks, drug usage, and arrests. U.S. law requires truck drivers to speak and understand the English language. We are told that the U.S. will conduct an English Language Proficiency test of each Mexican driver, but we are not assured that Mexican drivers must speak English or pass the test. Mexican trucks will make highway safety for Americans a major problem. We have no way to know a Mexican driver's record of accidents, alcohol or drugs, or a Mexican truck's record of brakes or emissions. Mexico doesn't bother with records or regulations. While U.S. truck drivers are strictly limited to the number of hours per day they can be on the road, there is no way to figure out how many hours a Mexican driver has been on the road when he crosses the border. Has he been driving the typical Mexican 20-hour day? Mexico claims the current ban violates our treaty obligations under NAFTA. That’s not true because NAFTA is not a treaty; it was never ratified by two-thirds of Senators as our Constitution requires for a treaty, and is merely a law passed by Congress in 1993. The only so-called obligation was issued by a secret NAFTA trade tribunal in 2001, not a real court whose judgments are binding. The claim that the Obama-Mexico deal to allow in Mexican trucks is reciprocal (U.S. trucks will be allowed to drive into Mexico) is so cynical that we can hardly believe anyone says it with a straight face. South of the border down Mexico way (in the words of the old popular song) is the most dangerous war zone in the world, where U.S. truck drivers would become targets of hijackings, theft, murder, kidnappings, and even beheadings committed by the drug cartels. Built into the deal is the sneaky imposition of costs on both U.S. truck drivers and U.S. taxpayers. Each truck will be required to install an EOBR (electronic on-board recorder) costing $3,000 plus maintenance fees: U.S. drivers at their own expense, and Mexican trucks as a gift from U.S. taxpayers.
It's a safe bet that many of the trucks will carry illegal aliens and illegal drugs. Border inspection will be a farce; maybe only one in ten trucks will be inspected, perhaps merely one in twenty. This is no time to admit Mexican trucks.
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