CDR from the CBP

Customs and Border Protection, the sterling office of Homeland Security keeping us safe and/or keeping us irritated, announced recently its new program to improve ‘professionalism’ of staff. According to the public information officer down at the Blaine crossing (Peace Arch), the CBP (what do you think that acronym really stands for?) is ‘in the middle of a reinvigorated professionalism training process.’ No more discount charm school consultants, I’d guess. They’re making promises of all sorts, including to treat us all ‘with courtesy, dignity and respect.’ I wonder whether that means I can have my middle name back or whether ‘courtesy, dignity and respect’ is provided only as a last resort, which is to say after all else has failed.

You can see that I’m still pretty irritated about having my real middle name (my maiden name) lopped off by a border agent because his view of the law is that my birth-certificate middle name is ‘my legal middle name.’ No sign that he was a lawyer, so perhaps I should be filing a citizen’s complaint against border agent Sean for practicing law without a license.

Well, I wish them well in their professionalism quest, but I’ve seen these aspirations before with real professionals. That is to say, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. And I was never very impressed with their level of achievement, so it seems unlikely that the CBP would do any better, given that they don’t even have the hallmarks of professionalism (self-regulation, codes of ethics, etc.).

But the effort at Peace Arch may need to be transferred to some other border stations, anyway. To see how it’s going on the border crossing north of Detroit, go here. Yikes! A dramatic increase in potential for losing our Nexus cards, I’d say. Here is a link to the news that the CBP has been given new powers to seize things of ours. I don't know what happened to things like reasonable cause for search and all that. Part of the Constitution we didn't need?

Which reminds me, have I confirmed with CBP that I haven’t moved anywhere? No, I haven’t. But a friend who checked with the Nexus people down at Peace Arch reported to me that those CBP were of the opinion that we didn’t have to confirm that our address was the same; rather, we had to tell them if our address was NOT the same. So, exactly why did the CBP hand out all those flyers telling us otherwise? More courtesy, dignity, and respect, I guess. CDR from the CBP; or something.