When Rob Gaw hears about the announcement, he’s suitably philosophic. No one wants to be held up at the U.S.-Canada border longer than they have to, says the risk manager for Coastal Pacific Xpress, one of the largest transporters of fresh fish in Western Canada. But we all have to play our parts when it comes to addressing threats to national and international security, he says.

Gaw is reacting to the National Security Entry/Exit Registration program unveiled last month by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Part of a plan to beef up border security in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States last year, the program requires certain travellers to be fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by INS agents upon arrival to the United States.

The INS has declined to disclose the criteria it will use to identify which visitors might be deemed threatening, but said nearly all visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria-countries listed by the U.S. State Department as state sponsors of terrorism-would face extra scrutiny. The list was expanded to include men from Saudi Arabia, the home country of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.

Truck drivers from those countries are allowed to enter the United States only at certain ports of entry. They will be fingerprinted, photographed, and required to report again to INS at a designated port on their way out of the country.

The program smacks of racial profiling, a policy which no federal department or agency on either side of the border has admitted using. It also could have profound implications for trucking companies like Coastal Pacific Xpress, more commonly known as CPX. Based in Cloverdale, B.C., CPX employs a large number of lease operators and drivers of Muslim and Middle Eastern decent. The freight they haul is destined for points as far south as Texas and Florida. All of it is terribly perishable, of course, and vulnerable to delays at ports of entry.

Will Gaw’s drivers be happy about the INS program? Likely not, he says. “But let me ask you this: If you had friends or relatives who died as the result of a terrorist attack, would you think it’s too draconian? I don’t. I think these measures are needed.” He notes that requiring drivers to provide a personal security profile is a one-time thing, after all, and is consistent with the FAST program announced earlier this year. Operators who submit to initial criminal background checks are fast-tracked through the border. “You are an approved individual to go back and forth and are rated very low risk at that point,” he says.

Security systems like this might actually make the trip past border crossings faster for drivers of Middle Eastern origin with pre-approved status. In the past, the scrutiny of drivers “got so bad that some of the guys were actually removing their turbans to cross the border,” Gaw says. “They were putting on ball caps or not wearing anything, and then putting their turbans back on once they got to the other side.” It has been especially bad for truckers who “rack and stack” team drivers. The thinking of INS officials: why would three drivers be sitting in a truck entering the United States for a load that would normally take only two drivers?

Grant Albani, who operates a warehousing and contract haulage business moving frozen vegetables between Saint John and the Boston area, says programs designed to improve border security will add unnecessary complexity to an already cumbersome driver hiring process.

“We subject our drivers to drug tests, to aptitude tests, to road tests, we conduct background checks… Now a foreign government wants to track their comings and goings? Getting a job in this business is getting to be too much trouble.”

Hiring a driver is a time-consuming and expensive process, he adds. “It’s tough getting information about a guy.” The threat of a lawsuit has a chilling effect on people who may have a wealth of information about the applicant across the desk from you, Albani says.

Prospective employers fear being sued for asking questions that are too probing; previous employers worry about divulging information about a driver that legally must be kept private.

South of the border, several states have tried to make it easier to keep an eye on truck drivers. Incon, a New York company that provides driver surveillance services, monitors licences in 10 states through exception-based reporting systems that alert them when a violation is added to a driver’s record. But company founder Gibs Tolsdorf says it’s a struggle for jurisdictions to balance security against privacy concerns — and yet again against budget constraints. “There’s a real contradiction,” he says. “The government wants employers to know everything about their drivers, but it’s not really giving them a cost-effective way to do that.”

In light of more stringent border security policies, Gaw believes one of two scenarios will unfold: “Drivers are going to comply or they’re going to say, ‘Well, I just won’t go down to the States anymore.'” A driver who won’t or can’t travel to the United States will have a short career in a business where 50 per cent of the traffic is south of the border. “We’re pressed for drivers and lease operators now,” Gaw says. “If drivers say they can only run Canada, then we’re really going to be hard-pressed to find operators for the U.S. side.”

Gaw is more concerned about other developments at the border. Last year, the U.S. Customs Service dispatched agents from the Pacific Highway border crossing south of Vancouver to the U.S.-Mexico border to handle increased traffic. As a result, Gaw says, an inspection that once took 40 minutes to complete now may take two to three hours.

Despite the frustrations of running a company that does so much of its business out of country, Gaw says a line-up at the border, admittedly a carrier’s biggest headache, is a small price to pay for the benefits of crossborder business.

“They ask you some questions, they run your plate number, and then you’re through,” Gaw says. “You have to remember, too, that we’re talking about entering someone else’s country.”