There are no ferries to Point Roberts (surprisingly) -- but there is quite a large marina. As a lot of boats moored there are Canadian boats, there must be an official reporting scheme. I'm not sure if a boat owner would have to visit the land based US customs and Immigration office on Tyee Drive.

Also, I wonder if all three agencies that normally patrol the border are stationed in Point Roberts. I have never seen a Border Patrol car -- only a Whatcom County Sheriff's vehicle. For sure Customs and Immigration have agents there.

Anyway... that's my Point Bob bit. Attached below is a newspaper article about the CAUS border... we Canadians are sure a whiney lot!

North of the 49th,

Doug

Thursday » January 2 » 2003

Canada's smug border tango with U.S.


Paul Kedrosky
National Post

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

Worries about the Canada/ U.S. border are growing pronounced in the United States. And that increased worry may yet have economic consequences.

The latest issue is the news that five men of Middle Eastern descent are wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation -- and the FBI says the men may have entered the United States through Canada. While that may not turn out to be true, the level of concern is rising in the United States about its neighbour to the north. But Canadians and their politicians continue to dismiss the complaints from the United States.

The immediate Canadian reaction to the most recent news took one of two forms. First, the RCMP said that there is no proof that these men came from Canada. Fair enough, I suppose. But the FBI did say that it thought that the men came from Canada. They may not have, but the RCMP saying that they have no proof that they did is cold comfort.

The second reaction is more worrisome, and may yet have economic consequences. Canadians are fond of saying that it takes two to do the border tango. After all, while these people may have come from Canada, it was the United States that let them into their country. This is a slippery and dangerous argument, and it is surprisingly common.

Imagine a large turf farm beside a golf course. Imagine that, because of the size of the farm and the absence of animals being raised, there is scant fencing between the two properties. Now imagine that the farm begins letting in feral pigs -- after all, we can't let them just die in the wild. And now imagine that a few of those pigs cross over into the golf course one fine day and chew up some greens.

Whose fault is it? The golf course owner could rightly point out that implicit in not having a heavily fenced border is the expectation that the farm owner would do nothing to abuse that trust. Were it Canadians that owned the pig farm, they would undoubtedly retort that it is the golf course owner's fault for not noticing the influx of feral pigs and not catching the pigs on the way in.

But that "border tango" argument is exactly what we hear all too often from Canadians. It is not our fault, they say, it is the fault of the Americans for not better policing their border. These are, of course, the same Canadians who whinge and cry when they are patted down at the border, or fingerprinted, or held up in long lines while they are trying to make their way south for the winter.

The trouble with this border tango argument is that it allows Canadians to be typically smug. They can have their lax immigration policies that allow anyone to become a refugee, and they can still pretend that there are no special obligations that come from having such a long, undefended (and often unmarked) border with the largest economic and military power in the world. That is childish, naive and dangerous.

Because it bears reminding regularly that the United States and Canada have a unique relationship. While it is born of geographic proximity and some flukes of history, the result has been a paired trading relationship that is unrivalled anywhere else on the planet. Canada needs the United States; that country is Canada's largest trading partner by far, the buyer of almost $1.5-billion in Canadian goods every day (or roughly 87% of Canada's exports). The United States needs Canada too, but Canadian exports to the United States are almost four times as important (on a percentage basis) to Canada than are U.S. exports in the reverse direction.

A good rule of thumb in the world of trade is you don't mess with large trading partners, especially when the relationship is asymmetric. Because while trade is vitally important to both partners, even a small change in Canada's export relations with the United States would send the surprisingly strong Canadian economic recovery into a tailspin -- and the Canadian dollar would dive along with it.

Lest anyone think that's not possible, it is. Arguably, under more generous and friendly relations between the two countries the current softwood lumber imbroglio would have been ameliorated, if not solved entirely. But security concerns, among other things, give these economic issues unnecessary political cover.

Canadians have long been the beneficiaries of general ignorance on the part of the U.S. population. While Canadians alternately fret and joke about how little Americans know about Canada, the result has been that the Canadian economy has prospered out of the light. Unlike the preoccupation with many facets of the United States's other large trading partners, Canada just ticks along quietly, a quietly prosperous neighbour that has generally caused no trouble.

But prominent U.S. politicians are turning their attention to Canada and the consequences of its lax immigration policy. And opinion-moving pundits are getting in on the act too, with the widely watched Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, for example, agitating loudly for a boycott of Canadian products until Canada takes more care about who it lets into the country.

While government-led action is still not in sight, Canadians should not let themselves believe that having border issues drive increased scrutiny would be a good thing. Our largest trading partner is rightly worried, and Canada should want to be inside its ample tent looking outward, not outside looking in.

----- Original Message -----

From: Jesper Nielsen

To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 12:32 PM

Subject: Re: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Swedish exclave in Haparanda?

For me there are official pene enclaves like Point Roberts, Jungholz, Klein Walsertal etc. Inhabited settlements only practically accesible through foreign territory.

Point Roberts might have a ferry connection, so... But still you cannot just go there when you want, you have to line of for the boat I guess.

And then there are these great unimportant pene enclaves, which I like a lot, like the Haparanda one. Or the long lines of Belgium houses in a German street in the BEDE border town of Liechentenbusch. They all have to go abroad to leave their properties, or to go to the Belgium bakery in the German street.

Attached a scan of a tiny Belgian pene exclave only a few meters from BEDELU. The Belgian farmer has made this saliant into Luxembourg so that his cattle can reach the small border creek for water. Comming from LU the best practical way to enter the small sailent is going to BE first.

Jesper

Oh Jan, enclaves or exclaves. I forget sometimes to call them by their proper names. I belive in Rolf's definition. Llivia is a Spanish exclave and a French enclave. I think the media always gets this wrong. Kaliningrad has been in the news alot recently, and is always referred to as the "Russian enclave Kaliningrad". One thing is that they call in an enclave, but a Russian enclave would be forreign land INSIDE Russia

----- Original Message -----

From: acroorca2002 <orc@orcoast.com>

To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 3:41 PM

Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Swedish exclave in Haparanda?

jan & jesper of course you can call things anything you want & pene simply means or used to mean nearly or almost or not quite in the original latin so naturally enough anything anyone has ever thought of as somewhat clavelike yet failing to qualify as a true clave in any number of aspects they may have had in mind has attracted this catchall copout prefix of pene but perhaps a greater cause of such indifference is that even the oft cited clave authorities use pene in their books to mean various things while they sometimes overlap it with other qualifiers such as virtual & quasi to mean the same &or different things judging from various reports we have had as a result we have now seen a number of intrinsically different types of things that have all been called by this single modifier pene by various people here at different times these things include international tongues of land proruptions reachable via the neck proruptions unreachable via the neck truly near misses like jungholz any other seemingly or practically isolated areas etc but the result is of course more confusion than precision anyone who cares not to mix apples & oranges indiscriminately will take some care about what they are describing here fruit salad lovers will be happy to call it all fruit no problem either way it is just nice to know what people mean if anything also i only see 1 international island so far on your map but none of these things really matter very much imo unless they matter to you --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Jan S. Krogh" <jan.krogh@t...> wrote: > Thanks for the comments! Of course they are on two international islands! > Yesterday night I was tired, now it is morning and is SO clear... > Let's call it pene enclaves, as Jesper suggests! > -----Original Message----- > From: acroorca2002 <orc@o...> [mailto:orc@o...] > Sent: 2. januar 2003 07:05 > To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com > Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: Swedish exclave in Haparanda? > > > per your query above > i believe none of these are really claves by any exacting definition > tho one does look like a true international island > & all the rest are probably authentic international tongues of land > > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.435 / Virus Database: 244 - Release Date: 30.12.02

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