The BTA’s work can be divided into three broad themes. The themes encompass all of the multi-faceted issues and challenges that face the policy staff, committees, and board of directors.
Balancing Security, Trade and Travel at the Border
In a time of heightened security concerns around the world, the BTA’s grassroots members actively seek out solutions for improving the security challenges for government while facilitating commerce across international borders. The BTA advises top-level policy makers, such as serving on Homeland Security’s Secure Borders Open Doors Advisory Committee, with the goal to facilitate travel while enhancing security. Our advocacy issues are among the most challenging issues for NAFTA countries today, including border security, C-TPAT, infrastructure, immigration, WHTI, and US-VISIT. Among our many initiatives, the BTA spearheads the development of a pilot project for cross-border rail security and gathers support for an alternative wallet-sized travel document called the PASS Card. The BTA strives for policies that strike a balance between national and economic security.
Improving Quality of Life in Border Communities
For more than twenty years, the BTA has served as the voice of border communities along the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. Improving the quality of life in border communities is a top priority for the BTA and we have always searched for solutions to address the many unique and diverse challenges created by the tremendous growth in commerce at our borders. The BTA has a strong record of promoting the concerns of border communities to federal policy makers, covering issues of the agricultural and fisheries community, environmental protections, health education initiatives, water rights issues along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the effort for a guest worker
program in the United States.
Keeping NAFTA Competitive and Efficient in a Global Economy
Trade between Canada, Mexico and the United States has nearly tripled since the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Growing competition both within the NAFTA countries and globally pressure companies and governments to develop their effectiveness and meet the rising demands. Delays at our ports of entry, caused by inadequate infrastructure or heightened security, cost our economies in both jobs and money. The BTA is a leading advocate of public-private partnerships to solve the critical challenges of the NAFTA countries among each other and in the international marketplace. The BTA’s unique approach is also instrumental at developing the necessary infrastructure at ports of entry, advising from design to implementation, and establishing more efficient means for the flow of trade across borders, such as the development of the Automated Commercial Environment, which allows truckers to register via an e-manifest process.
