Free Passage (Valley News Op-Ed)

To The Editor:

I urge your readers to contact their US Senators and Representatives and express their opposition to the proposed permanent immigration checkpoint facility on I-91 before it's too late. This project typifies Washington's one-size-fits-all approach to a national problem which is completely out of character with the local communities which must live with the results. It's the wrong project, in the wrong place, sending the wrong message and it needs to be stopped.

It's the wrong project because it creates a fixed facility to pursue a mobile target. Even assuming these checkpoints are an effective immigration law enforcement tool, why create an obvious and fixed barrier in one location when the options to avoid it are so easy?

It's in the wrong location because it ignores the rural character of the setting and makes no effort to fit in with existing community facilities. Based on Valley News coverage, the primary purpose of the permanent facility would be to support checkpoint personnel and their immigration screening activities. Why not locate these support facilities and personnel in an existing community and operate mobile checkpoints from that base? Downtown White River Junction could easily accommodate such a base within minutes of mobile checkpoints on Interstates 89 and 91 as well as state highways which otherwise bypass the proposed facility. Why dump millions of dollars in taxpayer money creating an edifice in a rural setting when it could be put to good use investing in an existing downtown, generating additional foot traffic, lunch business, and retail activity in the process.

Finally, the proposed permanent checkpoint sends a terrible message with long-term implications. I'm proud to live in a region where routine searches by governmental authorities rankle people. I don't want my children growing up accustomed to routine traffic stops and the overt, ominous presence of governmental authority such a facility would establish. I recognize the federal government's authority to police our borders and I think it's obvious we've made enemies abroad who will injure us given the opportunity. Nevertheless, a permanent facility permanently alters our expectations of what it means to be free citizens allowed to travel freely within our borders. We should not allow the trip between Springfield and Hartford to become, in effect, an international border crossing with the heightened authority to search and detain citizens such crossings entail.

Remember the freedoms Al Qaeda has already taken from us. I, for one, refuse to accept that they're gone forever. They will be, however, if we simply acquiesce to federal expediency and fail to ask what it will cost us. It's the wrong project, in the wrong place, telling us every time we pass through that we've lost a portion of our birthright forever. Stop it.