Thread: this is absurd

This is absurd. This from a government that keeps our boders and ports wide open.


Going fishing? Pack your passport
Updated 12d ago | Comments172 | Recommend33 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

Yahoo! Buzz Digg Newsvine Reddit FacebookWhat's this?By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
Rick Ungar's charter fishing service promises a great time on Lake Erie. But there's a catch — and it's not freshwater fish. It's the Homeland Security Department's new anti-terrorism rules.
When the 2008 charter season begins next month, U.S. citizens paying to fish on Lake Erie will have to bring either a passport or two other IDs if they plan to cross the northern border's invisible watery line.

When they get back to shore in the USA, they'll have to drive to a local government reporting station and pose for pictures. They won't be posing with their fish, but for Customs officers via a videophone connection.

That's because half of Lake Erie — as it happens, the half with the deeper and cooler waters that often spawn the best fishing — is in Canada. The Homeland Security Department intends to enforce new border security rules — largely focused on those coming into the country by land and air — on fishermen re-entering the country.

Ungar and many of his fellow charter boat captains — Lake Erie alone has 600-plus — are incensed.

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They say the rules are difficult to follow, will dramatically cut down on tourism and won't protect against terrorism.

"How does this secure our country?" asks Ungar, a retired Cuyahoga Heights, Ohio, police chief. "I'm not insensitive to law enforcement issues, but these are fishermen, for God's sake."

The rules apply to all the Great Lakes, but opposition is most potent on Erie because the geography of the lake means the best fish are often over the international line.

Some operators haven't decided whether they'll continue fishing in Canadian waters. If they do, the operators will be required to:

•Fax in passengers' personal information — name, date of birth and government ID number — to the local Customs and Border Protection office an hour before they leave shore. The names will be run against terrorist watch lists.

•Make sure passengers carry either a passport or a government ID and a proof-of-citizenship document.

•Send the passengers to a local border protection reporting station after landing, so they can call in on a videophone.

Officers will be watching and doing spot checks on patrol boats and government aircraft. "Our concerns are anything from terrorists and terrorist weapons to drugs and undocumented aliens," says Brett Sturgeon, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.

Jim Bonner, whose Sunshine Charters business has been taking tourists fishing on Lake Erie for 25 years, calls the rules "a waste of taxpayers' money."


"It's a shame" he says. "It's just wide-open water."


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Officers will be watching and doing spot checks on patrol boats and government aircraft. "Our concerns are anything from terrorists and terrorist weapons to drugs and undocumented aliens," says Brett Sturgeon, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.

Meanwhile, drugs, guns, terrorists? and millions of illegals flow like water over our southern border and we cannot even get a fence built! Great to see CBP has their priorties in order...

Gee I thought all the Homeless security folks are at the airport food court
watching the illegal aliens clean the tables.
As a reward for turning up the metal detctor so it beeps if you have iron in your blood and having countless Americans miss flights even though they got to the airport 2 hours before departure time, Homeless security
lets some take the summer to play at Lake Erie.

Now if we could just figure out how to get our politicians on those fishing boats, perhaps we could use them as bait! Homeland Security?

There is plenty of smuggling on the northern border beer, guns, cigarettes, drugs and illegal aliens and a lot of it is done by fishermen. Not every Great Lakes fishermen is involved but it would not take many to create a problem for the United States. As the southern border tightens the nothern border will attract criminals. To some may seem a needless problem but it makes sense.

I wonder if they will do the same to those who own yachts, and sailboats, and houseboats, or private fishing vessels?

When was the last time you went on a charter fishing boat where the captain pulled up alongside another vessel or hit a port and took on "packages?'

Something smells rotten in Denmark! I do not think it is the Indians that smuggle cigs and beer between the reservations.

If out of chaos comes order, then if there is little chaos, perhaps it would be advantagous to create more chaos. Thus creating more order.

Charter fishing boats full of fishermen does not seem like much of a threat to me. Private yachts on the other hand.............?