Preventing illegal activities in international trade - Essay Example

Preventing illegal activities in international trade Every day, number of challenges for US increases manifolds as a result of the illegal cross-border activity. Criminals conduct a myriad of illegal activities that include but are not limited to the import and export of goods and smuggling of drugs as well as people. “Human smuggling and illicit cargo pipelines continue to funnel individuals and contraband from the Western Hemisphere, Near East, Africa, and South Asia into the United States” (US Customs and Border Protection, 2009, p. 6). Law enforcement agencies are exposed to numerous challenges when they have to control the cross-border crimes, one of them being the difficulty of distinguishing between legitimate activities and suspicious attitudes.

In addition to that, the contemporary radar technology is not quite sufficient to detect all kinds of smuggling and drug trafficking activities happening across the US borders. Technological advancement and increased workforce are visualized as two of the most authentic ways to enhance CBP’s control over the US borders. One way to control cross-border crimes was proposed by the President Chavez in Venezuela. President Chavez proposed to introduce EMV chip cards in order to hinder such a fraud which the banks in Venezuela have conventionally been compensating for.

Numerous forms of fraud and crime are omnipresent in Venezuela, one of which happens to be point-of-sale fraud. Merchants find other ways after the swapping out of their card readers. However, chip cards do little to lower the rate of cross border fraud in a country because even the new EMV chip cards contain the magnetic stripes and it is possible to skim them. The skimmed data of mag stripe can be availed in counterfeiting the cards which may be put to use in places where magnetic stripe cards are still accepted by the point-of-sale equipment and the ATM machines (Litan, 2011).

The Venezuelan banks are not quite concerned with the cross-border fraud trends because the amount of money Venezuelans can spend outside Venezuela on their cards is restrained by Chavez. Therefore, Venezuelans have to seek permission from Chavez to use their cards before leaving Venezuela which causes the card holders frustration. Although this is a potential way of stopping the cross border fraud, yet the benefit is obtained after much financial loss to the Venezuelans. In order to find objective solution to the problem of cross-border crime in US, it is imperative that more effort is directed at producing such radar technology that is able to detect low-flying aircraft involved in narcotics and human smuggling.

The conventional effort of the law enforcing agencies to increase the amount of physical barriers, legal sanctions and close watch technology is somewhat effective in controlling the in-flow of illegal goods, though it does little to catch hold of the entrants after they have made their way into the country (Kyle and Koslowski, 2001, p. 114). Developing chip cards like President Chavez did in Venezuela is an effective way of controlling cross border illegal trade yet to minimize its demerits, government needs to simultaneously take measures to minimize the economic loss to the citizens.

References: Kyle, D., and Koslowski, R. (2001). Global human smuggling: comparative perspectives. USA: The John Hopkins University Press. Litan, A. (2011, May 24). Chavez figures out how to stop cross border fraud. Retrieved from http://blogs.gartner.com/avivah-litan/2011/05/24/chavez-figures-out-how-to-stop-cross-border-fraud/. US Customs and Border Protection. (2009, July). Secure Borders, Safe Travel, Legal Trade U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Fiscal Year 2009–2014 Strategic Plan. pp. 1-32.

Retrieved from http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/about/mission/strategic_plan_09_14.ctt/strategic_plan_09_14.pdf.