Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Elise Stefanik today led 12 of her colleagues in writing a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to abandon his administration’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement for essential travelers.
“The North Country’s economic partnership with Canada plays a major role in our local economy and in supporting our nation’s supply chain, but imposing more requirements on cross-border travel would only make our nation’s current supply chain worse,” Stefanik said. “Our communities have suffered enough from Joe Biden’s prolonged closure of the Northern Border, and it is unnecessary to impose new restrictions that further disrupt travel. I will continue to work to restore normalcy to our cross-border travel.”
In the letter, the lawmakers noted that even while nonessential travel was restricted, “The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that maintaining essential travel throughout the pandemic was necessary so that such restrictions did ‘not interrupt legitimate trade between the two nations or disrupt critical supply chains that ensure food, fuel, medicine, and other materials reach individuals on both sides of the border.’”
Since the reopening of the Northern Border, Stefanik has been pushing for parity on both sides and working to restore the cross-border relationship with Canadian partners. She wrote the Canadian Minister of Emergency Preparedness and the Minister of Public Safety to drop Canada’s COVID-19 testing requirement for fully vaccinated individuals entering from the United States. In November, Stefanik met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and encouraged Canada to drop its COVID-19 test requirement for those crossing into Canada.
Read the full letter here.
