To insure prompt service.
Over half of the Northeast Kingdom’s Jay Peak customers are from Canada. But border crossings are troublesome and Jay Peak owner Bill Stenger is willing pay for quicker crossings for his customers. To that end a new pilot program will allow private companies to provide supplemental private funding for personel and customs terminals at the border. Facilities at the Miami airport, and areas of the US/ Mexican border in Texas and Northern Vermont are pilot areas for “alternative private supplemental funding.”
The money could be used to cover salaries of additional staff, overtime and services such as inspections. Customs and Border Protection is reviewing submissions from more than a dozen places around the country and expects to choose five ports of entry this summer.
Stenger is reported to be willing to pay an estimated cost of $1,000.00 per day but not for “long-term”. He says he has a “good relationship” with border officials, is sympathetic to their budget constraints and willing to “buck up and help pay for it”.
“On the one hand I don’t think we should have to pay for this extra care, but I’m willing to do it because it just means so much to us,” said Bill Stenger,[…] “I cannot afford to have our guests unnecessarily delayed at the border.”[emphasis added]
The NEK’s Bigfoot businessman Stenger has extensive business interests in NEK development that involve international trade. Currently, along with Jay Peak partner Ariel Quiros he is developing an aircraft manufacturing facility at the Vermont state owned airport in Newport. In April it was reported this manufacturing business will import fuselage components from Russia and around the world. The existing runway will be expanded by 1,000 ft. to accommodate private jets pending FAA approval.
The plane manufacturing company also builds float planes, said Quiros’ partner Bill Stenger of Newport City, who is working on a waterfront hotel and conference center project.
Stenger said he has talked with U.S. border officials about creating a port of entry for float planes on international Lake Memphremagog so they could tie up at the hotel.
Should be no problems there: after all, some of the Border Patrol/Customs/Immigration staff at the crossing will already be on Stenger’s payroll.
What could possibly go wrong with privately funded customs and immigration screenings in the backyard of a burgeoning multinational?
Up against the dryness (and I mean “dry” like a martini, like “stealth outrage” packing a wallop at the end) of your piece when I read it, BP, there was the voice of outrage in the back of my mind:
“Does anybody NOT see a problem with this???!!! Talk about outsourcing!! How will this work? The Customs & Immigration personnel funded by Stenger pass up and down the lines asking for destination, and anyone who SAYS Jay Peak is directed to a special booth, their documents given cursory inspection, maybe checked against the hotel reservations list and waved on through? And no drug smuggler ever, ever stayed at a fancy hotel while deals were going on, no, unh-unh.”
Oy.
THIS is what the Republicans want to achieve with the so-called sequester: preferential treatment for those who can pay – and their very good (read “very rich”) friends and customers, of course.
NO! And NO! and NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, 39-times NOOOOO!!
NanuqFC
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation. ~ Clarence Darrow
Didn’t the Romans start doing stuff like this, I mean, towards the end? They farmed out tax collection to rich and powerful nobles as a perk. They hired mercenary armies.
We’ve already got a multi-tier justice system, with the folks in the VIP lounge never even getting indicted. Why not a multi-tier customs system?
I do remember traveling across the border on the old Montrealer and watching the 7 people of color out of 100 passengers getting hauled up to the lounge car for a once-over. This is just a race-neutral class-based revival of a grand old tradition.
“alternative private supplemental funding”
APSF? What kind of acronym is that?!
Alternative Private Expediting Supplemental Helpful Immigration Treasury might be a better version. Or at least it yields a better acronym
Any other suggestions?
Supplemental Management of Upperclass Grand Guests Leading Economic Rehabilitation, perhaps?
NanuqFC
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ~ Thomas Jefferson