42 / 104
EuroWire – November 2007
40
Transat lant ic Cable
Mr Jedwab also noted that those choosing Canada over the
US have the highest levels of education. These are not, he said,
‘people who can’t get a job in the States.’
While Americans moving to Canada are still outnumbered by
Canadians going in the opposite direction, the imbalance is
shrinking. Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United
States – a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.
Over objections, long-distance Mexican
trucks may ply American roads for a year
A federal appellate court on 31
st
August refused to issue a
temporary order to block a Bush administration ‘demonstration
project’ allowing as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to
freely haul their cargo anywhere within the US for one year.
The decision by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9
th
District
cleared the way for the controversial pilot programme for testing
the safety of Mexican trucks on US highways.
The Teamsters union, the Sierra Club (an environmental group),
the consumer-advocacy group Public Citizen, and other
American opponents of the project had filed suit to prohibit
the long-haul Mexican truck traffic, arguing that there would
be inadequate oversight of the drivers. They also claimed that
a hasty and ill-considered effort to wrench the US into full
compliance with provisions of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) would put public safety in jeopardy.
NAFTA requires that all roads in the United States, Mexico, and
Canada be open to carriers from all three countries. Canadian
trucking companies have had full access to American roads
right along, but Mexican trucks have been permitted to travel
only about 20 miles inside the US from a few border crossings
such as those at San Diego (California) and El Paso (Texas).
The court declined to forestall the effort to put the preferential
treatment to the test. In a brief order released shortly before
the start of the long Labor Day weekend, a three-judge panel
in San Francisco denied the request for an emergency motion
to block the pilot programme.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had said earlier
that it expected to open the border to Mexican trucks as early as
the following week.
Dorothy Fabian
USA Editor