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Immigration issue masks 'North American Union'

Published: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - 6:00 am



By Steven Yates


The immigration situation doubtless has many Americans baffled. On May 15, President Bush delivered the briefest speech of his career (17 minutes), making pronouncements such as, "We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. ... The United States must secure its borders. This is a basic responsibility of a sovereign nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security."

So why isn't he doing more? Why did the Senate pass a bill that not only amounts to amnesty for more than 11 million illegals, but according to some estimates would also lead to an influx of more than 100 million more immigrants in the next decade? Why, as reporter Sara Carter of the San Bernardino News asked, "in a time of heightened concern about national security, have so many illegal immigrants been able to make their way across the border? And why has border security ... been such a bit player in the government's national-security plans?" Why, finally, are there cases where police with illegal aliens in custody have been ordered by federal immigration officials to let them go?

We now have answers, thanks to several articles penned by Human Events columnist Jerome R. Corsi (best known for his criticism of John Kerry in "Unfit to Command"). According to Corsi, Bush's actions belie his words. He wants open borders. He is committed philosophically to an ideal: a globalized, borderless world. This ideal has the support of multinational corporate CEOs who hope to reap windfalls from a near-unlimited supply of cheap labor.

On March 23, 2005, Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin at Waco, Texas, and signed an agreement called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP created working groups with specific projects, ordered to report back in 90 days. Major media were silent; you had to go to the official Web site (www.spp.gov) or the White House site.
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Two months later, the Council on Foreign Relations released a task force report titled "Building a North American Community," supplementing the SPP. The idea has been called NAFTA-Plus; it has also been called "deep integration." When the SPP working groups checked in, they had organized trilateral networks of public-private partnerships, the cumulative effect of which, over time, will be to transform our borders into mere lines on maps. This has been furthered with almost no congressional oversight; however, a specific item of legislation titled the North American Cooperative Security Act (HR 2672 and S.853, in committee) would pull Mexican and Canadian agencies into partnership with Homeland Security and create a North American security perimeter.

The first visible media personality to notice any of this was CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, who wondered on the air if our elites had gone mad. If we cannot secure our present border, can anyone in his right mind believe North American globocrats could guard a perimeter thousands of miles longer?

Corsi explains: The goal of the elites is to create, with almost unnoticeable gradualness, a North American Union modeled on the European Union. It wouldn't happen by legislation but through a process of evolving partnerships and increasingly free migration, until the day we wake up and find the old United States gone! If this sounds paranoid, consider what Vicente Fox told a Madrid audience in 2002: "our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada ... an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union ..." NAFTA tribunals have already reviewed U.S. court decisions.

Doubtless there are economic development zealots who think regional integration is a great idea. We must respond that we are more than an economy; we are a nation with a constitutional heritage of limited government -- with private property rights for all, not just the super-rich. This heritage -- in bad enough shape after ghastly Supreme Court decisions like Kelo -- will disappear in less than a generation if the United States is eased into a regional superstate.

Unconvinced? Look at Europe. Look especially at France. Under the European Union, France has become a jobless no-man's land of unassimilated immigrants (mostly Muslim) -- a tinderbox that has already erupted in violence. The plain truth is, the borderless economic utopia of the elites just won't work. It will widen the gulf between rich and poor, and further undermine a middle class still reeling from NAFTA. It will trigger justified resentment if native-born Americans see ex-illegals reaping benefits (e.g. Social Security) for work done while still illegal (this is in the Senate immigration bill).

Continue with regional integration, and within 20 years America will look like France does now.

Dr. Steven Yates teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College, and he serves on the South Carolina Board of Citizens Committee to Stop the FTAA. He is the author of "Worldviews." He can be reached at FreeYourMindinSC@yahoo.com.