Bill Aley wrote: “Like it or not, DHS keeps records of infractions and they will investigate and follow up on individuals with a history of plant "smuggling" which is a term used when someone ships without the appropriate documents. Recently they have been accessing fines and penalties to the importer for the actions of the exporter. Under the current legal system the government has been winning cases of the importer not preparing the exporter sufficiently or ensuring that the appropriate documents are in the shipment and the rewarding the importer with stiff financial penalties. “ Yikes! Maybe I’m on their list. I’ve received seeds from foreign sources which were sent through the mail without any documentation. But it sure wasn’t my fault: I spent about $5 in postage to mail the proper documentation to the sender (my small lots seed import and the associated documentation). Because of potential language problems, I filled everything out and all that would have been necessary on the part of the sender was to remove the documentation from my envelope and transfer them to the envelope to be sent. But the sender, a private individual and not a business, unilaterally decided that they did not want to generate a paper trail which authorities on their end might be able to trace. No doubt there are cases where the importer and exported are in collusion, and those cases should be pursued. But probably much more frequent are those cases where our friends overseas think they are doing us a favor when they take shortcuts. Bill, I hope we can count on you to keep before the rule makers the complete lack of control we as individual prospective importers have over the actions of the senders. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/