Border Officials’ Cross Talk

February 13, 2008 at Arizona State University’s Tempe Campus

About the Cross Talk

The North American Center for Transborder Studies (NACTS) sponsored the first Border Officials’ Cross Talk, a unique opportunity for a meaningful and continuing comparative dialogue between border practitioners and academics working on both the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican borders to discuss best practices for border management.

The event brought together approzimately forty academics and practioners from across North America, including officials from federal and trilateral agencies throughout Canada, the Unites States and Mexico, to address the primary query:

“How can the three nations and other ‘states’ find meaningful and sustainable ways to identify, develop, preserve, protect, operate, inspect, and/or accommodate the common assets, resources, and natural systems that, necessarily, will continue to be controlled by each sovereign regime, yet at the same time, clearly exist across the borders?”

Cross Talk Discussions and Conclusions

Participants emphasized qualitative factors such as the potential of “soft power,” the influence of perceptions, the value of information and communication, and the overarching importance of quality of life for border residents.

They called for the need to conceptualize a North American identity, to embrace trilateralism instead of dual bilateralism, and to build North America as a community instead of simply an accident of geography. It was generally agreed that disconnects at the heart of the current debate obscure this continental reality and weaken its foundations, making all North Americans poorer and less secure.

Since 9/11, security has become the main focus on the border, hindering informal local solutions, demanding more resources, and changing the political climate. While a number of strong binational institutions that safeguard the environment exist, more efficient bureaucracy and inter-agency cooperation is increasingly necessary. Finally, while NAFTA has been successful in increasing North American trade, our continent has been surpassed economically by China, and in the new reality, national economic competitiveness will have to be reconciled with the imperative of security to increase regional competitiveness and quality of life for all citizens of North America.