PORTLAND — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says the possibility of charging border crossing fees on people entering the U.S. by land from Canada or Mexico is all but dead.

The Maine senator says the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee has approved the department’s fiscal year 2014 funding bill with language that expressly prohibits funding any study looking into the feasibility and cost of instituting a border crossing fee.

Collins, who grew up in northern Maine near the Canadian border, says border community residents routinely go back and forth between countries to work, dine, shop, visit family or attend church.

Collins and other members of Congress from border states strongly objected when the Department of Homeland Security, in its 2014 budget proposal, asked permission to study a fee at land border crossings.