Bulletin
February 22, 2021
In
Memoriam
Jaime González Luna Bucher, Smart Border Coalition co-founder, esteemed friend, and
binational advocate for decades, lost his life last Saturday. A consummate binational
entrepreneur and businessman, Jaime directed Bucher Industries, a company that offers contract manufacturing,
logistics and warehousing and business incubation. He was also president of BOF Productions, a film and video
company with projects in Baja California and Southern California.
He always found time to
serve the binational community, whether as a thought leader during Smart Border Coalition launch meetings
over 13 years ago, president of the Tijuana
EDC, or vice president and advisor to Tijuana
Innovadora.
Jaime always told me the
Smart Border Coalition needed to work much more with a young generation of
Tijuana and San Diego entrepreneurs starting to make their mark in business so
that they could also understand the power of civic engagement for the
improvement of our border. May he rest
in peace.
*****
As this is Black
History Month, I salute African Americans who came to this region for a
better life.
The San Diego History Center provides good
insight about how Blacks came to the region. During the Spanish and Mexican
periods Blacks
sailed with
Cortez in 1519 and were slaves until 1829. Mixed-blood Californios were found
at all levels of society. They had been assimilated into the population of
Mexican-ruled California. In fact, Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of
California, was part Black.
Probably the
most important Black success story of the 19th century in our region
was that of Margaret and Albert Robinson, who in 1887 built and owned
the Hotel Robinson. They operated it for 28 years. Today, it is known as the
Julian Hotel and is located at 2032 Main Street.
There were a
number of colorful personalities in the early 1900s. For example, Reuben Williams (a.k.a. Reuben the
Guide) wore a Mexican sombrero, a zarape, and a sheriff’s star on his vest when
he gave his guided tours. It was said that he always got top price for his tour
of Tijuana. When he approached the Tijuana
River he would stop his mules and tell his passengers: ‘Dollar tickets keep
your seats, 75-cent tickets walk and 50-cent tickets push.’
*****
I recommend concern but not alarm over the newly enacted federal
law requiring a plan by this July to institute a whopping increase in the rate
of vehicle and freight inspections at U.S. ports of entry.
Public Law 116-299, “Securing America’s Ports Act,” requires
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to
“develop a plan to increase to 100 percent the rates of scanning of
commercial and passenger vehicles and freight rail entering the United States
at land ports of entry along the border using large-scale, non-intrusive
inspection systems to enhance border security, and for other purposes.”
DHS is required to submit its plan to Congress through the Senate
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the House Committee
on Homeland Security, with estimated costs and projected impacts.
Many observers familiar with border movement will find
increasing inspections to this level impractical and dangerously threatening to
the host of cross-border activities dependent on the ports, in the present
state of port capacity. But if we wade into the usual weeds of policy,
practice, and politics growing
around virtually any border movement issue, it’s clear this
legislation with its short deadline is not an axe ready to fall on border
travel.
--In
making this law work, the Biden administration seems very unlikely to ignore issues of
border crossing fluidity. The act became law during the Trump administration.
Biden’s current immigration bill as seen on the White House
website includes a section prioritizing smart border controls
by “authorizing additional funding for the Secretary of DHS to develop and
implement a plan to deploy technology to expedite screening and
enhance the ability to identify narcotics and other contraband at every land,
air and sea port of entry. This includes high-throughput scanning
technologies to ensure that all commercial and passenger vehicles and
freight rail traffic entering the United States… undergo pre-primary scanning.”
This tells me that the new administration is sensitive to
crossing fluidity at the border for both supply chains and individual crossers.
This sensitivity could translate into a revised act that could ask for a
watered-down version or achieving the same outcome over a longer period.
--The potential short- and long-term effects on inspection times
are hard to forecast. At first glance, it would seem obvious
that gamma and X-ray equipment throughput can easily increase current wait
times. On the other
hand, today’s current lines are slow enough
that if a vehicle or truck had to be inspected as it crept towards the
inspection booth, wait times could conceivably not be affected at all.
Today’s gamma and
X-ray machines cannot process a vehicle or a truck in less than 12 seconds.
According to Leidos, a San Diego-based technology services and defense
company, trucks can travel at four to five miles per hour while
being scanned, and a typical scan takes about 12 seconds plus the time
for the analysis an officer has to perform in order
to decide the truck’s fate.
Imagine doing
this for 3,500 trucks each day at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. A 12-second wait would add up to 700 hours of
additional wait times each day. For
autos the daily wait would be a cumulative 20,000 hours at all our regional
ports.
For pedestrians, let’s use airports as an example. When going
through airport security, they must line up to get X-rayed. Just going under
the machine takes 2-3 seconds followed by an officer performing an analysis and
making a determination. Picture doing this 50,000 times each day at our ports.
This adds at least another accumulated 1,667 hours each day to crosser wait
times.
I am also certain that in six years’ time, machines will
process people, vehicles, and trucks
faster. By then, artificial intelligence, not officers, will make immediate
decisions about travelers. So it is conceivable that by 2027, goods, autos, and
people will be inspected in a fraction of a second.
--The act specifies “incremental progress” over six years to
achieve 100 percent inspections. This is critical because it
gives DHS flexibility to develop a system that can adapt to the land port
environment, potentially avoiding modifying wait times or marginally affecting
them. The time frame also enables CBP to make operational and staffing
adjustments to avoid adding steps to the inspection process.
--DHS is required
to estimate costs, projected impacts on crossing times, staffing, security, and
operations at ports. If DHS presents data and models projecting prolonged wait
times, particularly for cargo, U.S. industry with critical operations in Mexico
will voice a loud and persistent opposition. Multiple border organizations will
sound the alarm bells.
*****
I was invited to make
public comments at San Diego City Councilmember
Raul Campillo’s explanation of the
work program for the council’s Economic
Development and Intergovernmental Relations Committee. Councilmember
Campillo put together an ambitious plan that includes border-related topics (https://www.sandiego.gov/citycouncil/cd7).
Here are some of the items I like:
--His plan looks to promote cross-border opportunities
and investments that encourage progress with Tijuana and Baja California.
--He devotes July through December meetings to the Border
Economy and Trade Expansion.
--He wants to preserve banking and currency exchange
services at the border. On a personal note, this is a question of compliance
vs. equity! Unfortunately, there has
been a lot of stereotyping of Mexican customers who open bank accounts and
investment accounts in U.S. banks. Money laundering is real and always present,
but what most banks forget is that most of their Mexican clients have
legitimately built their wealth.
--For Trade Expansion and Regional Competitiveness,
Campillo wants to attract a financial, entertainment, or technology firm to
headquarter in San Diego. There is no question in my mind that the city needs
to think much bigger than it has, as a first-tier city, and attracting a large
firm to the county is a worthwhile objective.
*****
Facial verification is now a reality at our pedestrian crossings. U.S. Customs and Border
Protection believes it is an efficient way to process travelers. There is a
chance that this system will be coming to the vehicle lanes. The PedWest Port of Entry at San
Ysidro will continue closed to regular crossers and will become a place for Migration
Protection Protocols (MPP, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols) processing only.
*****
With elections coming in June, Baja California water authorities need to move swiftly to put in
place some permanent and stopgap solutions for the polluted water treatment
problem.
Back in September of 2018, a San Diego Union-Tribune article
on the matter stated that an Israeli company, Odis Asversa, would pipe in treated wastewater from Tijuana to
irrigate the Valle de Guadalupe
vineyards.
The $77 million project called for the
construction of a sewage treatment plant to replace the San Antonio de los
Buenos plant 6 miles from the border and a 65-mile aqueduct from southeastern
Tijuana to the Guadalupe Valley. Well, we are still waiting for evidence that
the company will officially begin its work.
It also looks like Tijuana will need water
sources for this summer to avoid shut-downs. CESPT is busily drilling 7 new
wells that should be ready by May.
*****
The “Emerging Stronger Together” videoconference organized by the Center for US-Mexican Studies at UCSD
focused on higher education, with Chancellor Pradeep Khosla of UCSD, President Adela de la Torre of SDSU and President Fernando León of Cetys Universidad leading the way. All see
opportunities in the online education world, expanding global reach to Mexico,
but a balance must be struck with in-class environments.
De la Torre
sees systemic change created only through cross-border collaboration, with
water, energy, environmental, and health issues seen as opportunity areas.
She added that bureaucratic
hurdles back in the 1960s made it impossible to get dual degrees from U.S. and
Mexican universities and that these hurdles need to disappear.
For his part, León emphasized capacity
building, new formulas, and different financial schemes to attract students.
Just as we are redefining work, student experiences in college and graduate
school will change.
Also in the videoconference,
Professor Olivia Graeve of UCSD
pointed out her undeniable success in her research program: in 2019 she had 120
students. In 2020 it reached 1,300! So she wants to continue her in-person
programs but continue with virtual offerings.
*****
I predict that in no more
than 3 months there will be an excess of vaccines in San Diego County.
The question will be what to do with so many. So I advance
the notion of sharing the
vaccine with Baja California. The county is not in a bubble, it is part of a
mega region, as we all like to say. Well then, let’s work toward the goal of
inoculating our region!
Tijuana and most Mexican
cities will take many months to vaccinate the majority of their populations.
There are almost intractable issues with supply and distribution.
A solution must start with Governor Bonilla talking to Governor Newsom. Forget about the CDCs
for a moment as well as the pharma companies. Newsom has enormous leverage.
Private enterprise in
Tijuana is willing to acquire the vaccines. We must never lose sight of the inescapable
reality that the significant part of the our San Diego workforce residing in
Tijuana, if healthy, means healthy hotels, restaurants, construction sites, hospitals,
and schools in San Diego as well as healthy supply chains in Tijuana, Tecate,
and Rosarito. The region wins.
*****
For the Baja California private enterprise vaccination effort to work,
there is a whole host of areas to think about: supply, payment, logistics
including importing, cold storage, security, and venues for the application of
the vaccine, first responders, and an escrow service to make sure that
companies making monetary donations and those involved in logistics get their
money’s worth.
*****
I congratulate Carolina Chavez for taking a position
as Director of Economic Development and Business Policy for Councilmember Stephen Whitburn,
District 3 (https://www.sandiego.gov/citycouncil/cd3).
I am aware of the many hats
Carolina wore at SIMNSA. She led the
foundation, organized boxing bouts at Grand
Hotel, coordinated golf tournaments, facilitated the growth of the Baja Health Cluster, negotiated with
local authorities and gave many interviews, to name just a few.
*****
Our coalition visited Qualcomm’s Smart City Campus in
Sorrento Valley on February 11th (https://bit.ly/3ucNlNw). Our host was
the company’s head of Smart Cities and 25-year veteran executive Sanjeet Pandit. Board members Steve Williams, Hank Morton, Barbara Wight,
Hank Morton, Mohammad Karbasi and Pepe
Larroque, as well as Taylor Guitar’s VP of Product Development Ed Granero
and Bose Corporation’s Engineering Manager Peter Righellis were present.
As stated on their Smart Cities site, “The campus replicates a smart city
environment at the scale of a campus, featuring commercially available
end-to-end solutions as implementation of a number of ‘smarts’ — from lighting,
parking, transportation, logistics, trash cans, and security. All campus
capabilities can be viewed, managed, and controlled from our corresponding
command center while providing insights and real-time data and activity across
the many sensors.”
Notable
quotes came from various visitors:
Bose’s
Ed Granero: “The applications we saw in real-time
were far advanced technologically and have a clear and practical value for
improving factory and border logistics…The modularity of these solutions also
offer a unique opportunity to create a realistic phased approach to achieve the
team’s objectives at the border.”
Solar Turbine’s Mohammad Karbasi: “What resonated with me was that everything we
looked at was already in production and used in a practical manner.”
El
Florido’s Pepe Larroque: “It
was incredible to visit with Qualcomm, literally in our backyard, and to see
the incredible advances the have on "smart cities" that could help
our region's border so much! Truly eye-opening.”
Qualcomm has been involved in
border projects between Maine and Canada, Brazil and Paraguay, and Malaysia and
Singapore. We asked ourselves why it was that this great global company was not
looking at its own backyard as a unique testing ground. Now it is.
******
Magna
Certa (https://www.magnacerta.com/) is a
secure digital certificate company based in Austin and led by co-founder and
CEO Alfonso Olvera, a brilliant
Mexican engineer who has a formidable group of co-founders including Paul Maritz of Microsoft fame (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Maritz).
Advisors include Adam Back of
bitcoin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back)
and Willem van Biljon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_van_Biljon).
Magna Certa has been working with a worldwide program
called The CommonPass funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Economic Forum to allow countries
to update health screening entry requirements as the pandemic evolves and
science progresses. The CommonPass framework allows people to access lab
results and vaccination efforts, and consent to have information used to
validate their COVID status without revealing any other underlying health
information.
As vaccination efforts increase in our border region, the
likelihood of fraudulent vaccines has increased, leaving many in a vulnerable
position.
Laboratories are starting to appear on a weekly basis. We
are seeing drive-thru facilities, fly-by-night clinics and vaccine peddlers.
I have connected MagnaCerta and The CommonPass to a high-quality
lab in our border region.
Imagine our land border crossers subjected to additional
obligations when crossing. How would CBP know whether the information they
present at the booth is legitimate? The CommonPass accompanied by a secure
digital certificate on the smart phone could be a way to manage this.
*****
Frigid
weather stopped natural gas from flowing from Texas to
Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Chihuahua and Coahuila,
wreaking havoc on cross-border supply chains and giving the AMLO administration ample ammunition to
argue for developing domestic, government-funded, and carbon-based energy
sources.
Fortunately natural gas inventory and distribution from IEnova in Ensenada to thermoelectric
plants in Mexicali that distribute power to the Mexican Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) prevented Baja California from suffering a prolonged
blackout.
As Mario Lopez
of IEnova stated, “We have invested 25 years and $9 billion in Mexico and $3
billion in the pipeline to secure the North American Economic Region. Energy is
one of many areas where we are integrated and have a high level of
interdependence. Common North American goals benefit the region as a whole.”
****
We continue our campaign to give
the new book El Tercer País: San Diego & Tijuana. Two
Countries. Two Cities. One Community
to selected experts, officeholders, media, nonprofit, cultural, education, and
business leaders, and influencers. Over 200 people across the U.S. and Mexico have received
formal packages from our coalition. Our goal is 1,000 recipients.
*****
Our next online Stakeholders
Working Committee meeting will convene on Zoom on March 4th
from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. The coalition warmly welcomes broad, open participation
by all U.S. and Mexican (and all other) parties interested in port of entry
operations from any perspective. It will be the first meeting of 2021. Please
register in advance at: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwpf-CppzgrH9XMRRpHOQ5mDCNayoJ9XYHa
After registering, you will
receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Thank you,
Gustavo De La Fuente
Executive Director
gdelafuente@smartbordercoalition.com
(619) 814-1386