Labor isn’t fighting fair on Mexican trucks issue

Dallas Morning News: Anyone familiar with the Dallas Morning News’ award-winning series last year on the dangerous 18-wheelers plying Texas highways understands that our truckers have lots of room for improvement. For them to label Mexico’s trucking industry as too unsafe for U.S. highways is hypocritical at best and statistically dubious.

But that hasn’t stopped the Teamsters president, James Hoffa, from amping up the hysteria about the “dangerous” Mexican trucks heading our way under a NAFTA pilot program. Others warn that Mexican truckers will help smuggle illegal immigrants. Environmental groups are piling on as well.

On Web sites and blogs, they paint an image of tequila-swilling Mexicans swerving their overloaded, smoke-belching 18-wheelers across our interstate highways, taking aim at soccer moms in minivans full of children.

Job protection

This is not a migration issue, nor is it about dangerous Mexican truckers on U.S. highways. It’s about organized labor invoking Americans’ worst fears to protect jobs and undermine the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The time for this debate was during negotiations before NAFTA became law in 1994. Negotiators long ago concurred that it wasted time and money to transfer cargo from one truck to another at the border when a properly certified truck and driver from the originating country were capable of door-to-door delivery.

Successive Democratic and Republican administrations have supported requirements for Mexican truckers to meet rigid standards for safety, licensing, insurance, and a written and oral understanding of English.

Sen. John Cornyn shares our concern at the latest attempt to stall NAFTA. The Texas Republican stated last week, “The United States has a legal requirement to begin to allow Mexican commercial trucks to travel throughout the United States. ... If the United States does not abide by its legal requirements, economic penalties can be leveled at U.S. businesses and exports, which will harm Texas jobs.”

We fully expect the debate, the lawsuits and congressional blocking actions to continue. That’s politics. But invoking the worst stereotypes and scare-mongering tactics is a shameful way to fight.