Posted on 03/18/2005 5:55:13 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
OTTAWA - Mexico wants its North American neighbours to move more quickly towards integration on a continental scale, the country's foreign secretary said on Friday.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Jorge Castaneda was in Ottawa on Friday, meeting for the first time with Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham. "We would like to continentalize as much as possible," he said.
Castaneda said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 brought to the fore the idea of harmonizing several policy areas across the continent.
What Mexico wants, he said, goes beyond the continental perimeter idea that has been discussed at length in Canada in the wake of Sept. 11. Castaneda said it includes a more continental approach to social issues, immigration and energy.
"We have been pushing for this. And we have been encountering a receptive ear both in Canada and the United States at a certain level of intensity," he said. "We would like to move more quickly. We would like to move more deeply."
Mexican President Vicente Fox has spoken in the past about those deeper moves, such as adopting a common currency, a customs union, and the entire elimination of border controls.
Its an older article, but it is pertinent given the trilateral meeting next week in Texas to discuss NAFTA-plus
Let's get it over with and annex Mexico, be cheaper in the long run.
"Let's get it over with and annex Mexico, be cheaper in the long run."
Good idea...then some of my old auto worker friends can move to one of the newly created states and get their old job back.
Does this mean continent wide recognition of "gay marriage"? The idea of a "continental approach to social issues" means a lot of people will be unhappy, because leftist ideas will be imposed everywhere.
Continental integration complicated to Mexico's dismay.
Mexico wants North American integration follow the European Union's path. Or, more precisely, it hopes the United States and Canada will help nurse economic development and democracy in Mexico, just as Spain embedded its post-Franco reforms in the institutions of an integrated Europe.
Unfortunately for the Mexican government of Vicente Fox, the New World is not the same as the Old, even if a new North America is emerging that is sure to go far beyond the goals of the North American free-trade agreement.
"We're pushing for something with vision. It won't be cooked in a pot in a couple of years but it is something we'd like to see on the horizon in the next five to 10 years," said Arturo Sarukhan, chief of staff to Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda. "We need to find ways to [reduce] the asymmetry among the three countries."
After he ended seven decades of one party rule by winning the presidency in 2000, Mr. Fox surprised his NAFTA partners with an expansive concept of a North American community - a common market in 25 years or so involving a single currency and free movement of goods, services, capital and labour.
The Canadian and U.S. governments have been loath to respond, although Mr. Fox's vision - with the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - has helped spur a cottage industry in studies of continental integration.
Now, the Mexican government is adding shading to Mr. Fox's quick sketch. Mr. Casta¤eda suggests the three countries create "supranational" institutions to regulate their growing ties.
The most important, form Mexico's point of view, may be what are known in Europe as cohesion funds - assistance to the poorest EU members aimed at narrowing inequities among them. The example Mexico cites is Spain, the mother country, which benefited immensely from EU aid after joining in 1986.
"It is necessary to develop new institutions that promote North American prosperity," Mr. Casta¤eda wrote last week in the Mexican newspaper La Reforma (an adapted version is published in today's Globe and Mail.)
"...We can generate (greater) uniformity between the levels of economic and social development of each nation. This requires creative mechanisms."
When the NAFTA negotiations began in 1991, Mexican president Carlos Salinas suggested the pact should include aid for Mexico. The talks would lead to the first regional trade involving developed and developing countries; differences in living standards between Mexico and its northern neighbors were far greater than, say, between Greece and Germany. The world was watching, Mr. Salinas suggested.
He didn't get far although U.S. and Canadian-funded programs exist such as a much-criticized development bank.
But Mr. Fox is trying again, and significantly, is linking it with the suggestion that trilateral institutions could help make permanent Mexico's democratic transition.
NAFTA, Mr. Sarukhan said in an interview, is an "Anglo-Saxon invention" that skims the continent's surface by focusing on trade alone. Why shouldn't the three countries work together on things such as border security?
"If we can anchor a lot of our domestic changes abroad, we will be able to push our envelope of changes far more profoundly" he said.
Much of this is a problematic for Ottawa though, which shows again that a continental integration will be anything but a smooth process, Canada is already involved in assisting Mexico in myriad ways - Elections Canada has helped create proper voting procedures, for example. Why set up bureaucratic structures that would symbolically link the three countries but no mean much more?
"I don't buy it," said a Canadian official, arguing that Mexico wants trilateral institutions largely as cover for getting closer to United States. "Hang-ups with the U.S.; they have them in spades... The Mexicans are ignoring what is already a fantastically expanded relationship."
What really makes Ottawa sit up with concern is Mexico's suggestion that post Sept. 11 border issues might have been dealt with trilaterally. From Canada's perspective, that would have been disastrous - mixing the trade and security with matters along the Canada-U.S. border with the U.S.-Mexican border.
Trilateral institutions are hardly going to arise overnight, especially given the Bush administration's general skepticism of international organizations.
And the Canadian government isn't going to sacrifice its bilateral relationship with the United States just to help Mexico a leg-up.
The Mexican government is on to something with its continental vision for 2025 or 2030. But it won't be the Mexican blueprint that builds that new North America
http://ftpns.unb.ca/~s6gz4/ARCHIVOS/0012.html
Yes this is a good idea. After all we see how well the EU is working out right?/sarcasm
If Mexico wants a unified continent, they should fire their President, disband their Parliament, and apply for statehood. Short of that, I don't wanna hear their whining.
No thanks - take your idea of socialist paradise somewhere else please.
""We need to find ways to [reduce] the asymmetry among the three countries."
Translation:
"We need to find ways to get American money into Mexican pockets"
Those who have nothing always want to "share." =)
Continental integration will be a tough sell
Biometric identifiers, a common tariff and a common security perimeter - these are some of the elements that could turn North America into a single secure trading unit, says a task force of experts and political appointees from Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Theirs is a sweeping, optimistic vision of how a region that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean could function as a seamless unit. The task force, headed by former deputy prime minister John Manley, former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe and former Massachusetts governor William Weld, calls for a "North American economic and security community" by decade's end.
The idea is full of promise economically, but will be a tough sell politically, at least in Canada.
This North American community would entail unified visa and refugee regulations, joint inspection of container traffic at ports and integrated terror "watch" lists. But whose definition of terror would prevail? Canadians underestimate the feelings of insecurity in the U.S., following Sept. 11, while Americans do not understand how far Canadians feel themselves from such threats. The idea security arrangements would make it equally difficult for a terrorist to enter Mexico, Canada or the U.S. would appeal primarily to the U.S.
For political reasons, Canada stayed out of the U.S. missile-defence program; how much more uphill would be the effort to meld the three countries' security policies?
Take joint inspection at container ports. Currently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security inspects only 2 per cent of the 5.7 million containers entering the U.S. each year. Much more money will have to be spent inspecting containers, money Canadians might not want to spend. But if traffic is permanently snarled at Canada-U.S. border points by tough U.S. entry checks, perhaps a continental security perimeter would prove to be the lesser burden.
Canadians, and Americans, have gained greatly from free trade. The idea of further gains from further integration is a stirring vision, no question. Weld foresees an area within which "the movement of people and products would be legal, orderly and safe."
But in the current climate of Canadian-American relations, big new steps toward integration seem painfully unrealistic. In any further measures, Mexicans and Canadians would suspect a grab at resources, for one thing.
Canada is also unlikely to want to rewrite its visa and refugee regulations; nobody imagines the U.S. would change its own. And integrated watch lists could prove another point of contention in light of what happened to Maher Arar. He was arrested in New York by U.S. officials who, without notifying Canada, sent him to his native Syria, where he said he was tortured.
The expert panel is convincing about economic benefits. And the U.S. is determined to make itself more secure, one way or another. But the Canadian public mood today is scarcely favourable to continental co-operation. Unfortunately, this proposal might be an idea whose time has not yet come.
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/soundoff/story.html?id=f21842d6-06b0-4c58-9dd5-8bc8aa431697
Come any closer and I'll show you my Second Amendment!
Quite the contrary - they would be outnumbered, and I am sure gay marriage isn't too popular in Mexico.
And in Canada? There is FAR more opposition to gay marriage than the media suggests!
This is wht I have been saying will happen for years.
I wonder if Fox feels the same about his southern border??
How many Democratic seats in the Senate should we give them?
With 100 million people they ought to qualify for about 140 seats in the House of Representatives and I bet most of those very poor people will vote their wallets (Democrat) and not their social values (Republican).
Why isn't Mexico clamoring for closer 'integration' with Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, etc. to their immediate south, countries with which they have far closer cultural and linguistic ties???
Obvious answer: Mexican politicians hunger for more dollars, and want to leech off our economy more than ever.
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