Global Research

Dismantling the US Border Bringing Canada and Mexico into Fortress America

DOBBS: Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country’s fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico.

Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada.

Christine Romans has the report.

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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country.

ROBERT PASTOR, IND. TASK FORCE ON NORTH AMERICA: The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada, but at the borders of North America as a whole.

ROMANS: That’s the view in a report called “Building a North American Community.” It envisions a common border around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three countries, and a freer flow of goods and people.

Task force member Robert Pastor.

PASTOR: What we hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America, so as to ease the travel of people within North America.

ROMANS: Buried in 49 pages of recommendations from the task force, the brief mention, “We must maintain respect for each other’s sovereignty.” But security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that sovereignty.

FRANK GAFFNEY, CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: That’s what would happen if anybody serious were to embrace this strategy for homogenizing the United States and its sovereignty with the very different systems existing today in Canada and Mexico. RESOURCES: AZTLAN – the plan for ‘reconquista’.

ROMANS: Especially considering Mexico’s problems with drug trafficking, human smuggling and poverty. Critics say the country is just too far behind the U.S. and Canada to be included in a so-called common community. But the task force wants military and law enforcement cooperation between all three countries.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Indeed, an exchange of personnel that bring Canadians and Mexicans into the Department of Homeland Security.

ROMANS: And it wants temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility of labor between the three countries in the next five years.

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ROMANS: The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union. Yet, just this week, voters in two major countries in the European Union voted against upgrading — updating the European constitution. So clearly, this is not the best week to be trying to sell that idea.

DOBBS: Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don’t have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It’s astonishing.

ROMANS: The theory here is that we are stronger together, three countries in one, rather than alone.

DOBBS: Well, it’s a — it’s a mind-boggling concept. Christine Romans, thank you, as always.

There is no greater example than our next story as to why the United States must maintain its border security with Mexico, and importantly, secure that border absolutely. The police chief of the violent Mexican border town, Nuevo Laredo, was today executed. It was his first day on the job.

Alejandro Dominguez, seen here at his swearing-in ceremony, was ambushed by a number of gunmen several hours just after that ceremony as he left his office. The assassins fired more than three dozen rounds that struck Dominguez.

He was the only person who volunteered to become Nuevo Laredo’s police chief. The position has been vacant for weeks after the previous chief of police resigned. The town is at the center of what is a violent war between Mexican drug lords. The State Department has issued two travel warnings for Americans about that area just this year. And amazingly, the Mexican government calls those State Department warnings unnecessary.

Still ahead, the military recruiting crisis is escalating. New questions tonight about the viability of the all-volunteer military. General David Grange is our guest.

And “Living Dangerously,” our special report. Rising population growth in the West, dangerous water shortages, the worst drought arguably ever. We’ll have that report for you next.

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RECOGNIZING the contributions of the OAS and other regional and sub-regional mechanisms to the promotion and consolidation of democracy in the Americas;

RECALLING that the Heads of State and Government of the Americas, gathered at the Third Summit of the Americas, held from April 20 to 22, 2001 in Quebec City, adopted a democracy clause which establishes that any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the Hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state’s government in the Summits of the Americas process;

“The terrorist catastrophes in New York and Washington swept away media comment on other global events taking place on September 11, 2001. Virtually obscured on that historic agreement reached in Lima, Peru by the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS) on the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

You’d never guess it from the ho-hum reportage of the Establishment press, but the recently concluded Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico, was a revolutionary event of major magnitude. The two-day summit (January 12-13) attended by President Bush marked another step forward in a long-term agenda to abolish national borders and merge the countries of the Western Hemisphere into a regional Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The general spin by most of the media analysts is that the conference hosted by Mexican President Vicente Fox did not accomplish much, ending with a harmless declaration but little consensus among the hemispheric leaders.

The truth is far different. The summit’s final statement, the Declaration of Nuevo Leon, commits the 34 nations to courses of action that have little or nothing to do with increasing trade – the ostensible purpose for creating the FTAA – but much to do with destroying our borders, soaking U.S. taxpayers for billions of dollars more in foreign aid, and promoting socialism throughout the hemisphere. The Declaration, for instance, included a call for tripling the funding of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for loans to Latin American businesses. The IDB – like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other multi-lateral lending agencies – has a horrible record of corruption and of funding statist projects that have saddled Latin Americans with a crushing debt burden. With a huge infusion of new IDB bribe money for business and political leaders, the FTAA architects will be able to overcome much of the current resistance south of the border to their merger plans.

Mexico and U.S. put “Security Perimeter” on fast-track

Mexidata | May 20, 2005 By José Carreño

Washington, D.C.- Task force groups from the U.S. and Mexico are working together, on a fast-track basis, on in-depth reforms to national security relations between the two countries.

The delegations are working on the creation of a “North American Security Perimeter,” that among other factors includes the identification of targets vulnerable to terrorism along the common border.

Gerónimo Gutiérrez, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Foreign Relations, said that the negotiations are going well, with an initial session for proposals scheduled for June.

The border area security plan is being discussed at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Mexican National Security and Investigation/Research Center (Cisen) levels.

National security officials and analysts noted that authorities in both countries have suggested the possibility of terrorist attacks on tourist destinations frequented by U.S. citizens.