Readers Write: Crossing into Canada, DOGE, immigration, peatlands

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Rep. Pete Stauber’s apparent outrage regarding the Canadian government’s action to pause Remote Area Border Crossing Permits is disingenuous on at least two counts (“Crossing to Canada gets more difficult,” front page, Feb. 16). First, he cannot possibly care about the businesses that operate in the Boundary Waters or Quetico wilderness areas as he has sponsored a bill that would open the region to mining and thus destroy the very environments on which so many businesses, and property values, depend. Second, Rep. Stauber strongly supports all of President Donald Trump’s border measures and threats of tariffs aimed at Canada’s acquiescence to his immigration controls. Rep. Stauber seems to believe that Canada, a sovereign state not a 51st state, cannot take control of its own borders.

Canada has long been a friendly neighbor and business partner to the U.S. and to Minnesota. I and many others have long found Canada welcoming to our canoe travels across the border (with a RABC permit) and respectful of the businesses that operate across the border. The disruption of those crossings is unfortunate, but Rep. Stauber need only look at his and his president’s behavior to find solutions. Angry disingenuous declarations are not diplomacy, and as we are seeing the world over, they are unproductive and harmful to our longstanding alliances.

Georgiana May, Falcon Heights

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Rep. Stauber is upset that Canada’s Border Services Agency has suspended remote area border crossings into Canada from the U.S. Stauber criticizes Canada’s suspension of the permits, saying “Some of our constituents operate small businesses in remote locations in Canada and rely on these permits daily.”

Stauber has concisely, if unintentionally, explained why a trade war with one of our biggest partners is a bad idea. Instead of criticizing Canada’s government, Stauber should ask himself whether Trump’s caustic rhetoric, proposed tariffs, insults to Canadian officials and threats to absorb Canada into the U.S. might be causing backlash from Canada. That backlash is directly harming the people he claims to represent.

Terrance Newby, Roseville

“Trump claims of waste a long way from the facts,” a Minnesota Star Tribune headline read last Sunday. Despite the swath of disruption, confusion and waste billionaire Elon Musk has inflicted on our federal government, the article notes Musk has shown perhaps $2 billion in savings from specific line items with the concomitant reduction of the federal debt.

I suggest a less disruptive, less confusing and less wasteful solution to reducing the federal deficit by even more than $2 billion: Have Musk’s Tesla company pay the average corporate tax rate (that is a measly 21%, courtesy of Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut). From 2022-2024, Tesla paid merely $48 million in taxes on $10.8 billion in income (a 0.4% tax rate). Tesla didn’t pay one penny in taxes in 2022 when it made $5.5 billion, nor in 2024 when it made $2.3 billion. If Tesla paid the 21% corporate tax rate on its $10.8 billion income, Musk’s Tesla would have reduced the federal deficit by more than $2.25 billion. Voilà.

Maybe we could save even more money by looking further into Musk given that, as Fortune magazine notes, “Musk’s own companies have accepted over $20 billion in taxpayer funds in the form of contracts, tax breaks, and other subsidies.”

Brad Engdahl, Golden Valley

A letter in the Feb. 16 Readers Write section highlights a disturbing lack of empathy in President Trump and many of his self-professed Christian supporters. It may be difficult for us in our comfortable lives to envision walking thousands of treacherous miles with a few belongings on our back to escape persecution, drug or gang violence, desperate poverty, or to simply seek a better life for one’s children. While some of these people may be here illegally, what “crime” have they committed in taking critical jobs Americans are unwilling to do (e.g., the caretakers in last Sunday’s front-page article “Caregiving workforce is at risk in Minn.”)?

Unfortunately, this is of a piece with MAGA followers who cheer the demise of USAID programs, thinking delusionally that “saving” a few tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the world’s poorest populations will cure the deficit in a more than $6 trillion government budget. I, for one, will continue to side with the “soft-headed leaders” of the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian ministries who seek to lessen suffering in those whose plights we can scarcely imagine.

Russell Palma, Minneapolis

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One of the basic principles of American law is that we’re innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. So, while some newcomers to the U.S. may have entered the country illegally, we can’t point to any individual person until their case has been heard, almost always in a federal immigration court. Then, and only then, can we call them “illegal” and boot them out. If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, why has the Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation? (20 immigration judges fired despite backlog,” Feb. 16).

Jeff Moses, Minneapolis

Minnesota Star Tribune reporter Greg Stanley reported back in August about Minnesota’s peatlands (“State, U.S. losing valuable wetlands,” front page, Aug. 28, 2024). In the Star Tribune on Sunday, Feb. 16, another article asks “Could swamps save the world?”

Peatlands are comprised of swamps, bogs, fens, some woodlands and wetlands, and cover thousands of acres in the northern part of Minnesota.

Only recently have we begun to understand the true value of peatlands. Peat stores an enormous amount of carbon accumulated over hundreds and thousands of years, rather like coal or oil. Less than one-fifth of peatlands are protected globally although that is changing. Though peatlands constitute only 3% of Earth’s surface, they store more carbon than all of the world’s forests combined.

Minnesota’s peatlands formed some 10,000 years ago, after the last glaciers receded and plants sprouted in the cold, wet earth left behind. The soil was too wet and oxygen-starved for the matter to decompose, and it piled up, forming peat over time — a long time.

Around the world, people often have seen peatlands as wastelands. In developing countries they are sometimes viewed as ripe for agriculture, which was done here in the past. Sometimes there are pockets of minerals critical for batteries, where mining could again threaten disruption of the peatlands. Once the ground with its small layer of plant cover is disturbed, oxygen creeps into the system and the peat begins to decompose. As that happens, the stored carbon is released. Scientists estimate that about 1 million acres of former peatlands — one-sixth the state’s total, have been drained over the last 100 years. Those lands have become the state’s fourth-highest source of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the sedans and passenger cars and just behind natural gas, coal and small trucks.

Peat was mined in Minnesota for decades, and negatively impacted the wetlands. Scientists today see mining peat as a huge threat. Ultimately the carbon released from mining peat will outweigh anything we are gaining in electrification, greener technologies and clean renewable energy. And there is no way to stop the emissions. Peatlands should not be disturbed. The best and highest use for them is to sequester carbon, as it has done for millennia.

Laura Haule, Minneapolis