Border Crossing Fee Would Take Toll On Towns, Shoppers

Folks making a run across the U.S.-Canadian border here say they’d have second thoughts about heading south if they had to pay to enter the United States.

“We probably won’t come down anymore,” said Bill Briggs of Langley, British Columbia, who visits this border town frequently with his wife to buy bread, gas and milk at U.S. prices.

“The most we spend in the United States is $20. It wouldn’t pay for us to cross the border anymore,” he said in an interview at the border Monday.

At issue is a proposal in President Clinton’s budget plan for a $3 fee on cars and a $1.50 charge for pedestrians entering the United States from Canada and Mexico, to take effect next year.

The fee - which would be imposed on visitors to the United States as well as on U.S. residents returning - would generate an additional $400 million to improve customs and immigration inspections at the nation’s 169 border crossings.

In Blaine, business operators say the fee would worsen financial problems caused by the dwindling value of the Canadian dollar, worth just more than 70 cents American and closing in on the record low of 69.2 cents set in February 1986.

“Blaine will become a ghost town,” said Leanne Waltrip, owner of the Pet Emporium on Peace Portal Drive. “My Canadian business has already dropped 30 percent. It’s going to make it worse.”

The fees would cost Whatcom County’s depressed retail and tourism markets their slim advantage over Canadian businesses.

“It’s going to make it that much harder for us to do business. It’s going to hurt,” said Earl Hutchins, president of the Blaine Chamber of Commerce.

Canadians are “already skeptical about coming down,” said Brandi Beard of Lynden, Wash., who works in downtown Blaine. But she has a more personal concern.

“My boyfriend is Canadian,” she said. “It’s going to cost him … just to see me.”