INS staffing has not come close to keeping pace. Staff levels have remained constant while traffic has almost doubled. Not surprisingly. border crossings along the MichiganOntario bcrder are plagued with chronic delays. Truck delays alone at the Blue Water and Ambassador Bridges in Michigan cost over $11 million last year. A recent study jointly commissioned by the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation concluded that insufficient INS staffing was one of the principle causes of the delays at the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers border crossings. In addition. a January 1991 report by the General Accounting Office included Detroit among the eight largest land border crossings which are considerably below staffing guidelines. causing long delays at each of the crossings. INS inspectors call for a ratio of one inspector for every 200.000 annual inspection. but inspectors in Detroit make over 400.000 inspectors each year. On May 8. the entire Michigan delegation sent a letter to INS Commissioner McNary asking him to address these staffing shortages which are costing the State so dearly in delays and lost sales and which have diminished our ability to attract new businesses. On July 10. the Commissioner responded that INS could not address the staff shortages without additional appropriations from Congress. So I applaud the chairman for providing funding in this bill for additional inspectors at the highvolume crossings. My question to my colleague is whether. given the GAO study. he expects MichiganOntario border crossings to be among the locations receiving additional inspectors.
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border crossing