Bush Administration Erases U.S. Borders With Mexico and Canada

Articles

By Jerome R. Corsi, Human Events Online, June 28, 2006

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15809

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, was fundamentally an agreement to erase our borders with Mexico and Canada.

As I have documented below, the SPP “working groups” organized within the U.S. Department of Transportation are signing trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements with Mexico and Canada designed to accomplish the open borders goal incrementally, below the radar of mainstream media attention, thereby avoiding public scrutiny. Congress is largely unaware that SPP exists, let alone knowledgeable about the extensive work being done behind the scenes by the executive branch to advance the agenda articulated by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to establish a North American Union as a new regional super-government by 2010.

The June 2005 “Report to Leaders” references that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America was announced at the Waco summit in March 2005. Yet, the SPP declaration was neither a treaty nor a law. The legal status of the declaration was not much more than a press release issued by President Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin. Still, somehow SPP.gov conveys the impression that the Waco declaration created de facto a new NAFTA-plus legal status between the three countries that is designated the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or “SPP” for short.

Evidently using this quasi-press release as legal justification, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) has proceeded to organize extensive “working groups,” drawing freely from the executive branch. These SPP working groups are housed under the auspices of the SPP program in the NAFTA office, as directed by Geri Word, a DOC administrator. The June 2005 SPP “Report to Leaders” makes clear the extensive implementing work already undertaken:

In carrying out your instructions, we established working groups under both agendas of the Partnership -- Security and Prosperity. We held roundtables with stakeholders, meetings with business groups and briefing sessions with legislatures, as well as with other relevant political jurisdictions. The result is a series of detailed actions and recommendations designed to increase the competitiveness of North America and the security of our people.

Ms. Word confirmed by telephone that the membership of these “working groups” had not been published, not even on the Internet. Neither have minutes or transcripts of the many meetings with “stakeholders” and others been published, nor the “actions and recommendations” of the working groups. This revelation prompted a Freedom of Information Act request designed to bring these materials into the light of congressional public scrutiny. I also cannot find U.S. congressmen or senators who will identify any specific congressional examination or oversight that have been exercised over these SPP working groups that apparently have been convened to implement what amounts to only a joint press release declared from the trilateral summit in Waco.

Also found in the June 2005 “Report to Leaders” is that the SPP working groups organized in DOC are reporting to three U.S. cabinet secretaries: Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Comparable cabinet-level working groups are referenced to government websites in Canada and in Mexico.

More than 20 working groups are identified in the June 2005 “Report to Leaders” and decisions have been made to open U.S. borders and skies to virtually unlimited “migration” and trade from Canada and Mexico.

Regarding “open skies,” three working groups are working on aviation issues, groups designated as “Aviation Safety,” “Airspace Capacity,” and “Harmonized Air Navigation Systems.” I am told that a tri-lateral agreement to create a North American Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) was signed in 2005, and that five WAAS stations were planned to be put in place in Canada and Mexico in 2005. Implementing WAAS in Mexico and Canada involved sharing the U.S. Global Positioning System with Mexico and Canada. I am told that the three countries executed a Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) agreement in January 2005 to allow for Mexican and Canadian aircraft to confirm to U.S. air spacing requirements. I found that the three countries released a North American Aviation on a Joint Strategy for the implementation of performance-based navigation in North America. This initiative included Area Navigation (RNAV) and Required Navigation Performance (RNP) in North America.

None of the referenced agreements are found on the SPP website. Yet, the working groups on aviation appear to have already accomplished opening U.S. skies to free and unrestricted navigation by Mexican and Canadian aircraft. It could be concluded that aviation authorities in Mexico and Canada have been given the tools to identify the location of all aircraft flying over the United States at any time, including military aircraft. I found no discussion on the SPP website that establishes the SPP aviation working groups were acting within specific authority granted by Congress, or even that the SPP aviation working groups were reporting to Congress.

Later in the June 2005 “Report to Leaders” I found that SPP working groups have already established a “trusted traveler” program for North America, including procedures “to enhance the use of biometrics in screening travelers destined to North America with a view to developing compatible biometric border and immigration systems.” Moreover, “a single, integrated global enrollment program for North American trusted travelers” would be implemented within the next 36 months.

These descriptions suggest that all “trusted citizens” of the U.S., Mexico and Canada would be considered “trusted citizens of North America,” issued the type of biometric identification that would make crossing the border as simple as passing your credit card through a charge-out terminal at a retail store. Once these procedures are fully in place, the SPP working groups will have eliminated “illegal immigration” for the most part. By definition, all “trusted travelers” in the three countries would be permitted to “migrate,” and supposedly to work, wherever in North America they choose to be. Again, there is no SPP reference to congressional authorizing legislation or oversight.

In reference to commercial truck traffic in North America, the June 2005 “Report to Leaders” notes that FAST lanes are being developed at North American ports of entry such that within 12 months “trusted trade” commercial trucks with SENTRI electronic identification will be permitted rapid entrance into the United States. This will allow Mexican trucks carrying containers from China off-loaded in Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas to pass through the border at Laredo, Tex., as fast as a U.S. car today equipped with an E-Z Pass zips through toll stops on U.S. limited access highways. Again, there is no SPP reference to Congress.

SPP “working group” executive branch activity expands over every facet of commerce, trade, environment, and health imaginable -- ranging from e-commerce, to “a fully integrated auto sector,” to North American harmonized energy and steel policies, to clean air, a reliable food supply, and “a healthier North America.” Throughout the document there are references to “North America” as the province for the ultimate planning and regulations, always with an assumption that the current disparate regulations of the United States, Mexico and Canada will be “harmonized” or “integrated” into a trilateral structure of common and compatible regulations.

None of the many “memoranda of understanding,” “trilateral agreements,” or other accords to which the June 2005 report refers are printed in the report or listed through links to Internet addresses where the relevant compacts can be reviewed.

What the SPP June 2005 “Report to Leaders” documents is the knitting together of a new regional super-government, the North American Union, being accomplished in executive branch closed committees whose membership remain unnamed. The United States has never experienced a coup d’etat, let alone a coup d’etat pulled off by the executive branch under cover of “working groups.” Yet, what has been described in the June 2005 SPP “Report to Leaders” demands being scrutinized to see if that charge is here supportable.

I have filed a FOIA request to get the information needed to determine exactly what is going on within the Bush Administration's SPP policy. Is the United States being replaced by a North American Union? This is a question Congress should also demand be answered. Why aren’t congressional hearings being scheduled?

If the plan is to evolve the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a new regional North American Union super-government through executive action, the American people have a Constitutional right to know the truth. Is what is going on within SPP.gov is in accordance with the U.S. Constitution definition of executive branch rights and responsibilities, or not?

President Bush needs to come forward and explain SPP to the American people, explicitly and directly, and he needs to do so soon.

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