Travelers looking to make a trip to Canada or Mexico will have to wait another 30 days as the Department of Homeland Security extended border closures to curb COVID-19 infections.
Chad Wolf, the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, announced Tuesday that the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico land border closure has been extended until June 22.
“The President has made it clear that we must continue to keep legitimate, commercial trade flowing while limiting those seeking to enter our country for non-essential purposes,” Wolf wrote in a statement. “Non-essential travel will not be permitted until this administration is convinced that doing so is safe and secure.”
He continued: “We have been in contact with our Canadian and Mexican counterparts and they also agree that extending these restrictions is prudent at this time. We appreciate our partnership with Mexico and Canada in ensuring that North America is working together to combat the ongoing global pandemic.”
Canada
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference, saying the extension of the closure was a mutual agreement between the United States and Canada.
“It was the right thing to further extend by 30 days our closure of the Canada-U.S. border to travelers other than essential services and goods, but we will continue to watch carefully what’s happening elsewhere in the world and around us as we make decisions on next steps,” Trudeau said Tuesday.
During the French portion of his address, he noted there had been a push from Canada’s provinces to keep the restrictions intact for now because the border is a place of “vulnerability,” according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s interpreter.
The U.S. and Canada first limited travel in March for a period of 30 days after President Donald Trump and Trudeau agreed to close the border to help contain the spread of coronavirus. The State Department said that the order “does not apply to air, rail, or sea travel at this time, but does apply to commuter rail and ferry travel.”
Trump tweeted March 18, “We will be, by mutual consent, temporarily closing our Northern Border with Canada to non-essential traffic. Trade will not be affected.”
The border’s closure was then extended for an additional 30 days on April 18, with Trudeau explaining, “The agreement is the same terms. It’s just extended for another 30 days. It will ensure we continue to get essential goods and services back and forth across the border.”
Nearly 200,000 people cross the U.S.-Canada border daily in normal times.
“We will continue to take the measures necessary to keep Canadians safe while ensuring the continued flow of our essential supply chains on which so many Canadians depend,” Trudeau said in April.
Essential cross-border workers like health care professionals, airline crews and truck drivers will still be permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they supply grocery stores and medical goods in both directions. Much of Canada’s food supply comes from or via the U.S.
Mexico
The U.S. and Mexico first limited travel in March for a period of 30 days after Trump said the country agreed to close the border to help stem the spread of the coronavirus. Like Canada, the US-Mexican border closure was extended multiple times.
Wolf said that essential travel, including medical purposes, to attend educational institutions, for emergency response/public health purposes and lawful cross-border trade, would not be effected by the border closure.
For tourists, Mexico is the seventh most-visited country around the world, according to Mexico tourism data, and 26 million U.S. travelers visited Mexico from January to August 2019, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.
The Mexico-U.S. border has been a prominent and often contentious issue during Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office. During his campaign ahead of the 2016 election, the “build the wall” movement, an effort to build a wall along the border to keep Mexican immigrants from entering the U.S., gained traction among his support base but stoked criticism among his detractors.
Source: USA Today.
