INSIDE

It’s the Nexus best thing

By Meg Olson

Details continue to trickle out about how, and when, the proposed new NEXUS commuter lane will be in place at local borders. The good news is, it’s cheap. The bad news is, there’s a growing list of problems to address before it’s up and running.

Following a late February meeting between U.S. and Canadian border agencies in Vancouver, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service released enrollment procedures and costs for the program. “They’ve come to some agreement about how it’s going to work,” said INS district inspections chief Ron Hays.

Hays confirmed the first step for NEXUS hopefuls would be to complete an application form and send it to the Canadian processing center at the Douglas crossing with a fee of $50CDN.

Initial plans are for Canadian agencies to process applications first and handle the distribution of the funds. Once they approve an application it will go to the U.S. enrollment center at the Pacific Highway crossing, where the INS will do their own evaluation and criminal background checks on applicants. Applicants that make it through these preliminary checks will get a letter telling them when and where to come for an interview.

“Every person wanting to enroll will fill out an application, even if they’re two-years-old,” said Hays. There will be no application process tailored to families and each application will be processed independently and an interview set up. “If they give them to us together, the odds of them getting called in together are better,” Hays said.

Interviews by both U.S. and Canadian immigration representatives are likely to be at the Pacific Highway enrollment center, Hays said. Approved applicants may be fingerprinted and will have their photo taken and a card, valid for five years, will be issued immediately after the interview. Rejected applicants will not get their fees back.

The cards can eventually be used in three locations – both north and southbound at Pacific Highway, Peace Arch and Point Roberts – once those lanes are open.

Hays said they hope to have the whole system up and running this summer, but there is still a long stretch of hurdles to clear, starting with getting the enrollment process rolling. “That has always been the 900-pound nut to crack,” Hays said. “It’s a three-legged stool and all three legs need to come together simultaneously: the people, the place and the software.”
Hays said enrollment would first be open to Point Roberts residents. “We need an orderly enrollment process and we need to be ruthless,” he said. Two to three weeks before enrollment starts they are planning town meetings to outline the process.

Once enrollment is underway, Hays said opening the lanes should not take much time. “We have 90 percent of the inspection lane stuff already installed, at least at Pacific Highway,” he said. “My understanding is that once they finish at Pacific Highway they’ll go immediately to Peace Arch, and then Point Roberts.” Hays said each lane would take approximately a week to install, followed by at least a week of testing before it could open for use. On the Canadian side, he said, the CANPASS lanes would re-open as NEXUS lanes for travelers as soon as the southbound lanes opened. However, travelers would manually present their cards until radio-frequency antennas to automate card reading could be installed.

Hays and INS district public affairs officer Garrison Courtney agreed that June was a target date to get the program running, but not a very realistic one. “Our national headquarters has said they’d like to see it by June,” said Courtney, who has been quoted in media reports citing a June start date for the system to be fully in place. “Realistically, I don’t see it happening.” .

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