"Mexican Southbound Screening Snarling San Ysidro Traffic."

Here is an excerpt from Amy Isackson's article on KPBS.org:

"Mexico's screening of cars headed south across the U.S. Mexico border into Tijuana is snarling traffic on San Ysidro streets and on freeways in the South Bay. It can take an hour and a half to  cross into Tijuana during peak hours. Long waits are nearly synonymous with crossing the border north from Tijuana to San Diego. Waiting twenty minutes or more to cross south into Tijuana is also becoming customary... Ben Hueso, who represents San Ysidro on the San Diego City Council, said Mexico has the right to screen cars for national security, but its causing economic and environmental problems. 'Our freeways weren't designed to have vehicles backed up two miles from the border,' he said. 'Traffic gridlock on the neighborhood streets of San Ysidro have been bad for the economy and it has effected our ability to respond to fires in high traffic situations.' Mexico has delayed fully launching southbound screening at the San Ysidro crossing. Customs agents stop all cars for a few seconds but inspect a small percentage." Link to Full Article

Analysis: Welcome to a full-blown case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for syndrome. For months, both the Mexican and US governments have been spouting about how they're finally going to do something to curb the southbound flow of weapons and cash from the US into Mexico. Mexican authorities were due to start inspecting around 10 percent of southbound vehicles, and CBP was going to start random inspections of southbound vehicles.

It all looks great on paper, but welcome to the reality.

Don't get me wrong; we all knew this was going to happen, as it's the price to be paid for laying similar attention on the southbound as we do the northbound. Also realize that someone is ALWAYS going to complain, and there will always be a problem when new security measures are implemented.

But the question is, should we be doing it?

There are two schools of thought on this. The first is no, we shouldn't because it should be Mexico's responsibility to screen vehicles and people entering their country from the US. We know they don't really do that, but then the complaints abound about US-origin guns coming into the country illegally. Sec Clinton and Sec Napolitano have already assumed some responsibility for this issue, so leaving entirely up to the Mexican government isn't really an option.

That leads into the second school of thought, which is we should shoulder some of the responsibility (or blame, depending on whom you ask) for inspections since the guns and cash in question originate in the US. That's all well and good in diplomatic circles, but then you have US citizens complaining that their own government is causing long backups at border crossings and negatively impacting US businesses.

Here's what I think is the main takeaway from this story. First, someone is always going to be unhappy with efforts to clamp down on cross-border trafficking and border violence. In this instance, it's cross-border commuters, and probably more than a few inspectors on both sides of the border. Second, someone has to do SOMETHING about the southbound flow of guns and cash, and since it looks like a lot of that is going to fall on our government, we need to learn to live with it and cut those CBP guys and gals at the checkpoints some slack.