Washington lawmakers call for Point Roberts’ border reopening

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U.S. senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and U.S. representative Suzan DelBene sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas August 3 asking him to issue a border exemption for Point Roberts.

The letter goes on to say how the exclave faces unprecedented challenges because of the U.S./Canada border closure that is in place to slow the spread of Covid-19. While Canada is prepared to reopen their border to non-essential travel August 9, the U.S. government has extended its closure, set to expire August 21, for the 16th time.

“We appreciate and are grateful for the Administration’s science-based approach to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the letter reads. “But we also appreciate that sound science is based upon evidence. And we firmly believe that the evidence supports a narrow and tailored exception to the Administration’s Canadian border closure and a reopening of the Point Roberts port of entry to Canadian travel.” 

The letter continues: “Such an exception is defensible on the basis of Point Roberts’ unique geographic isolation and economic devastation and in no way undermines the Administration’s border policy: no other community the size of Point Roberts is located in an exclave along the Canadian border.”

Approximately 85 percent of the Point’s commercial activity is tied to Canadian visitors’ retail spending, according to the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce, which has all but ceased since the border closure.

The only grocery store in town, the International Marketplace, has stayed in business because of $100,000 in emergency fund relief from governor Jay Inslee.

“Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the residents of Point Roberts have been asked to forego their family, their friends, and in far too many cases, their livelihoods. The current border closure policy is now asking them to give up the very community that they have struggled to sustain. We find that unconscionable,” the lawmakers wrote. “We emphatically urge you to act swiftly and to save Point Roberts from further injury.”

To read the full letter, click here.

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