Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

State Representative Veronica Gonzales, D-McAllen. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

AUSTIN, May 25 - The Texas House on Sunday tentatively passed a resolution urging Congress to provide emergency funding to help ports of entry on the Texas-Mexico border.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 10 is authored by state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, and sponsored by state Rep. Veronica Gonzales, D-McAllen. The resolution was passed by the Senate earlier this session.

SCR 10 memorializes Congress to provide emergency funding and resources to begin immediately addressing increasing delays at ports of entry on the Texas-Mexico border.

It also memorializes Congress to provide funding for 24-hour customs operations and for infrastructure improvements, including more customs inspectors at border crossing points.

In debate on the House floor Sunday, Gonzales spoke about the impact NAFTA has had on the border region and how its ports of entry are having to handle much more traffic. She said U.S. trade with Mexico was worth $81 billion in 1993, the year before NAFTA started. In the first six months of 2008 that trade had jumped to $183 billion, Gonzales said.

Gonzales, who chairs the House Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs, also pointed out that of the $332 billion in trade last year between the United States and Mexico, 80 percent came through Texas inland ports via truck. She said trade is expected to rise 85 percent between 2000 and 2030. “We expect that the delays we currently experience at our ports of entry are only going to increase,” she said.

Mexico is the nation's third-largest trading partner, and Texas' largest trading partner. Texas' exports to Mexico far exceed all trade with the European Union countries combined.

Gonzales said the border region has “thrived” because of NAFTA. In a friendly exchange with state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, Gonzales said it was crucial trade is not impeded. The need for improved inspection facilities and infrastructure was evident, she said, from the startling statistic that only five percent of trucks are fully inspected.

In his remarks, Coleman, chair of the House Committee on County Affairs, appeared to have Gov. Rick Perry in his sights. Earlier this session, Perry criticized the federal government for the size of its stimulus package. He said he was concerned about the rising national debt. Coleman believes Texas benefits from the federal government's investment.

“Do you think the state of Texas could fund this (port infrastructure investment) out of our general revenue without help from the Congress?” Coleman asked Gonzales.

“No, we are already strapped. I don’t see that we would be able to do that,” Gonzales replied.

A portion of SCR 10 reads: ““Neither the present border-crossing facilities nor the current systems for inspecting and monitoring cross-border traffic were designed to handle the volume of people, vehicles, and goods now passing through checkpoints in Texas.”

The resolution goes on to say: “Compounding the challenge posed by an inadequate infrastructure are the increasingly detailed inspections, which are designed to reduce the flow of illegal substances and to guard against terrorism; as a result of these pressures, the length of the wait time at Texas ports of entry is soaring.”

Those increased wait times, the resolution continues, impedes the flow of goods from companies that depend on “just-in-time” deliveries, specifically the maquiladoras that are abundant in industrial border cities like Ciudad Juárez.

In a briefing document for Senate debate earlier in the session, Shapleigh pointed out that the “massive and increasing congestion” at U.S.-Mexico ports-of-entry not only threatens the local economies of the border region but also affects trade throughout the United States.

“A crossing that used to take 30 minutes now takes up to three hours. Increased wait times translate into fewer pedestrian and commercial crossings. This in turn leads to congestion, cost to products, services, and transportation, less tax revenue for border states, dangerous pollution, and a cost to our nation's competitiveness as we compete in a world of "just-in-time" manufacturing,” the brief stated.

Increased wait times are not due to increased volume; to the contrary, the volume of goods moving across the border has decreased, the document stated. “Rather, U.S. Border agents have stepped up scrutiny of Americans returning home from Mexico, slowing commerce and creating delays at our ports-of-entry that have not been experienced since the months following the 9/11 attacks without regard to mobility, commerce, and prosperity.”

Shapleigh pointed out that El Paso, with its four international bridges, is the second largest importer/exporter along the U.S.-Mexico border, after Laredo, accounting for nearly $47 billion in trade last year. These imports and exports account for approximately six percent of the entire U.S. economy.

Border lawmakers are not the only ones pressing for more federal dollars for Texas ports of entry. Last week, Texas Border Coalition Chairman and Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security in Washington, D.C.

Foster denounced a decision by the General Services Administration to bypass major Texas inland ports like Brownsville, Laredo and El Paso in its stimulus fund allocation. The GSA did give money to smaller ports, such as the tiny hand-drawn ferry at Los Ebanos in Hidalgo County.

“Los Ebanos thanks you for the new rope, but we need another $700 million, this time in the right account please,” Foster said.

Foster told the panel that the TBC shares the federal government’s goal of increased security. However, he said the border region needs the help of Congress in funding priorities that were ignored in President Obama’s budget.

“We need 1,600 more CBP officers, along with 400 canine units,” Foster testified. “We need the southbound operation to be controlled by the CBP, which has training in dealing with the traveling public, and not the Border Patrol, whose training with travelers is more confrontational.”

Foster said the border region’s ports need $130 million for 350 new ICE investigators to work on firearm trafficking and money laundering investigations and $20 million for improved tactical field communications for Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We cannot afford to delay the $20 million CBP needs to modernize its database used to identify potential criminals at the ports of entry or the $50 million for Operation Stonegarden to reimburse state and local law enforcement for their participation in border actions,” Foster said.

Foster added that the 9-11 terrorists entered the U.S. through ports of entry. Most undocumented aliens enter the United States through ports of entry, he said, as do most of the illegal drugs. “No border wall will solve those problems,” Foster said.