Border Crossing Made Easy for One Day : Commuters: INS experiment is intended to send a message to Congress about what could be done with more staffing.

Maria del Carmen has spent hours waiting to cross the international border to her San Diego job over the past 17 years, but Wednesday she sailed through the San Ysidro Port of Entry with no delay at all and enough time to share breakfast with friends at a downtown diner.

A one-day experiment by the INS--meant to show higher-ups and the U.S. Congress that increased staffing at the border would eliminate long delays--was hailed as a success by commuters like Del Carmen. Traffic moved so smoothly, vendors on the Tijuana side of the port accustomed to an ample clientele of gridlocked consumers grumbled for lack of business.

But regular delays were expected to resume today. Lack of federal funding and reluctance on the part of U.S. Customs to implement an automated commuter lane mean the long waits will probably continue for some time.

Instead of the dozen inspection booths normally operating in the early morning, INS officials from the San Diego region opened 19 Wednesday. They say the success of the experiment shows new ports of entry are not needed if staffing can be increased at existing border crossings.

The trial run was prompted by a local civic organization’s study that found that the bulk of border crossers are regular commuters who contribute more than $4 billion to the economies of Tijuana and San Diego yearly.

They shouldn’t have to wait so long, San Diego Dialogue concluded in its study, released in September.

The group is now studying solutions to clogged border crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, including an automated commuter lane that pays for itself and has been deemed effective by the INS in a pilot project on the Canadian border.

Although INS officials in Washington had hoped to implement a similar pilot program on the Mexican border, and Congress even instructed them to do so, conflicting legislation prohibited U.S. Customs from participating, grounding preliminary plans, said INS spokesman Duke Austin.

Drug apprehensions by U.S. Customs agents at the Mexican border crossings have skyrocketed over the past year, customs officials have said, and an automated commuter lane might enable drugs to cross into the United States undetected.

Opening more lanes is less politically sensitive and also effective, INS officials said Wednesday’s experiment showed.

“Today really surprised me. I heard on the radio that there were only five cars lined up at San Ysidro, and 25 at Otay Mesa,” Del Carmen, 35, said over pancakes at a Sixth Street diner. Del Carmen often detours to the Otay crossing just to avoid the long waits of 40 minutes to an hour closer to home, but even the Otay Mesa crossing, which opens to backed-up traffic at 6 a.m., can mean waits of up to an hour, she said.

Del Carmen, a maintenance worker at the Meridian Suites who supports four children, has made the international trip to work from her Tijuana home for the past 17 years, often waiting in lines of 45 cars at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. On Wednesday, she arrived in downtown San Diego almost an hour earlier than usual, in plenty of time to enjoy breakfast with a group of other Tijuana women.

Most commuters were stunned by the easy crossing early Wednesday.

“It looks like a miracle,” said Omar Ruiz, 19, cruising through the port about 8 a.m. Wednesday on his way to school in San Ysidro. Most days, he waits anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes, he said.

Wednesdays are notoriously bad, because scores of shoppers flock north to a South Bay swap meet, and that’s why it was selected for the experiment, said Rudy Murillo, INS spokesman for the San Diego region.

On any day, the border along San Diego’s southern edge is the busiest in the world, with more than 52 million cars crossing yearly, studies have shown.

“It’s very simple. We’ve got 24 lanes, and we opened 19 of them this morning,” Murillo said, adding that the others are under construction. “We have maintained all along that we had the capability.”

The waits at the border have been a significant deterrent to shoppers on both sides of the border, he said.

Dan Pegg, president of the San Diego Economic Development Corp., also roamed the primary inspection lanes early Wednesday, beaming at the swift flow of traffic.

“With the free trade agreement, I think you’re going to see an even greater demand for this kind of staffing. We’ll see more tourism, and more attorneys and bankers going back and forth. The traffic’s only going to increase,” Pegg said.

“I think right here proof positive exists that these current facilities, manned properly, can keep two-hour waits below 10 minutes.”

Charles Nathanson, executive director of San Diego Dialogue, which conducted the survey of border crossers, said Wednesday’s experiment gave him hope.

“More staffing could actually make this a civilized place. This is not a bad plaza. It’s not stuffed with polluting autos,” he said, gazing at the empty lanes, dotted only with dour vendors and an occasional vehicle.

Nathanson, stopwatch in hand, said he saw 21 cars clear primary inspection in five minutes. But most inspectors just waved vehicles through Wednesday morning, rarely checking trunks or conducting long interviews with occupants. That type of breezy inspection is rare for U.S. Customs officials, intent on drug interdiction.

Wednesday’s experiment cost the INS’ San Diego regional office several thousand dollars, Murillo said. “It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul today,” he said. And one day’s the limit. “We won’t be able to sustain this in our current budget. We need appropriated money from Congress, or some type of innovative funding,” he said.

In Washington, INS officials applauded the reduced delays but stressed that funding remains elusive.

“It’s moving along really good and that probably demonstrates that the real problem is staffing. But, after saying that, one has to ask, ‘How do we get efficient staffing?’ ” Austin said.

This year, 100 additional agents have been budgeted for the entire U.S.-Mexico border, Austin said, 35 of those for the San Diego region, which extends to the Arizona border. But Murillo said those numbers are too low to permanently staff more inspection booths.

As for implementing a pilot project similar to the one on the British Columbia border, where regular commuters pay a fee to be pre-inspected and receive an electronically coded sticker, Austin said those plans have stalled.

“It has to be a cooperative effort between Customs and INS. We cannot do it unilaterally,” he said. “All I can say is Congress proposed that we do it, and other contravening legislation said that Customs can’t participate in a program like that along the southern border.”

Customs officials were not available for comment Wednesday.

Although those who cross the border find the waits increasingly frustrating, one group of people found Wednesday’s experiment even more so.

“We’re practically not selling anything,” said 22-year-old Gabriel Sanchez Dominguez, who has sold doughnuts in the lanes of border traffic at the San Ysidro port for seven months. “The cars hardly stop, but last week was great. They were really backed up.”