The Jamieson Line border crossing station is located in the rural section of Northern New York state. Because of its rural location, the Jamieson Line border crossing station is one of the least traveled crossings in the entire country. It was estimated in 2010 that the border crossing served about 6 cars a day, which is nothing compared to the busier border crossings between places like Blaine, WA and the Canadian province of British Columbia or the border crossing between Laredo, TX and the country of Mexico.
Since there is such little traffic at the Jamieson Line border crossing, the primary responsibilities of border agents are to simply process people crossing the border and verifying their travel information. Border problems such as drug trafficking and smuggling and illegal immigration are not usually a cause for worry at Jamieson Line.
Border patrol jobs at Jamieson Line are pretty scarce, as they only employ an average of 5 border patrol agents per year. But, because of the small staff, border agents get a glimpse into the many duties that are usually allocated to specialized agents (i.e. canine unit agents, agricultural specialists, marine interdiction agents, etc.) The small staff requires an agent to take on many hats at the same time and to use a variety of skills, whereas, the agent would not get that opportunity at a border crossing station with a larger staff than the one at Jamieson Line.
Possible Closure of Jamieson Line Border Station
Since the border crossing station has such little traffic, federal agencies have considered closing the station for good. In many ways it makes sense because of the fact that there are two border crossing stations located within 10 miles of the Jamieson Line station. The Canadian side of the border, which is located in the province of Quebec, closed in 2010, so only people entering Canada can go through. People that wish to enter into the United States must go to one of the nearby border crossing stations.
The closure of the Canadian border station resulted in a 20 percent decrease in traffic, according to a study done by the United States Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) in 2011. The reasons given for the possible closure of the Jamieson Line station is to cut costs and increase the efficiency of the CBP, which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security.