INSIDE

NEXUS enrollment speeding up

In their first month of operation the NEXUS enrollment center at Pacific Highway processed 3500 applications, a rate just below initial estimates for weekly processing, but climbing.

“We’re making improvements by the hour,” said Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) supervisor Nicholas Ochoa. “The processing’s getting quicker as the inspectors get more familiar with it.”
Ochoa said tweaking the enrollment process will also help speed things up. They have scrapped initial plans to notify people of interviews by letter, opting instead for phone scheduling. “It could take two weeks for a letter to get to houses right across the border,” he pointed out.

From June 18 to July 23, INS figures show 3445 applicants have been approved and issued NEXUS cards. Canadians made up 78 percent of those approved. Three applicants who were approved and issued cards have had those cards revoked after the INS received information from another agency indicating they were not eligible. Canada Customs representative Glenn Bonnett said they have now received 25,000 applications, a number lower than the initial estimate revised after a hand count of applications.

While district chief of inspections Ron Hays has said at several meetings on the NEXUS system that Point Roberts applicants would get processing priority in the U.S. enrollment center, and district director Robert Coleman made that promise in a congressional subcommittee hearing in Blaine, Ochoa said that wasn’t the case. “Nobody’s getting priority or special privilege,” he said. “We do them in the order they come in.” Canada Customs does initial processing with no priority given to any group, and Hays said that U.S. Customs is now setting policy for the enrollment center and is taking the same position.

No one from U.S.Customs was available to comment, but Judson Murdock, U.S. Customs Program Officer, wrote in an email obtained by the All Point Bulletin “there is absolutely no reason to give any NEXUS applicant preferential treatment.” In the email he agrees with a suggestion by Molly Hay of Canada Customs that priority processing for Point Roberts residents or customs and immigration staff is not appropriate. “First come, first served,” Hay wrote on July 5.

Interviews and card issuance are taking from 25 to 40 minutes, according to INS inspections assistant Ron Shelton. The enrollment office at the Pacific Highway port of entry is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., six days a week and has 10 terminals. Hays initially predicted up to 250 applicants could be issued cards a day, once the center was up and running. “It should be several thousand a month coming through,” said INS national chief of inspections Tom Campbell on a visit to Blaine just prior to NEXUS lanes opening.

Shelton said reality wasn’t quite so speedy. “My calculations don’t match that number,” he said. Jan Pete, in charge of inspections in the Seattle INS office, said current numbers might not meet anticipated processing volumes, but that the 250 a day target was not unreasonable. “I think we can expect to get there,” she said. “Right now it’s a learning curve.”

Shelton added some time was being spent trying to reunite families whose applications were separated on their way through processing. “If we don’t have the applications in our hand we can’t make the appointment but if they call us to see if we have the additional family members we will make every effort to find them so they can all be seen together,” he said. On July 1 Shelton said they were beginning to set appointments for applications received between June 8 and June 11, but on July 24, they still hadn’t finished the applications received June 11.

The NEXUS lane is open limited hours until enrollment increases.
Pete said the enrollment process was still in the ramping-up stage and would get faster and more consistent. “We need to maybe do things a little differently to speed things up,” she said. “We expected to be slower at first. When you have a human element, and we’re still getting new people who need training, you will need to tweak this and that. I’m hopeful when we get through with the tweaks we’ll just get faster and faster.”

Visiting the NEXUS enrollment center July 1, U.S. congressman Rick Larsen said that once the initial backlog of applicants cleared the system and the lanes were full it would help make the border safer and more open. “NEXUS is going to help us insure a more secure border while insuring trade and tourism can continue,” he said.

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