Immigration Reaches a Summit

While intense debate about illegal immigration continued in Congress, President Bush arrived in the Mexican resort town of Cancun for a trilateral summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Border security and trade issues—particularly a long dispute over U.S. tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber (Reuters)—are hot topics for the meeting. But immigration will be at the forefront, and Fox, who hopes to revive his party's flagging popularity ahead of elections, will pressure Bush to push for a guest worker program (NYT). For Mexico, the lack of a pathway to legalization for Mexican migrant workers represents an unfulfilled promise by the Bush administration (CSMonitor).

A CFR task force report on North America has called on leaders of the three nations to adopt a new strategy to help secure and unite the continent. It includes recommendations to expand temporary worker programs, ease the movement of goods in North America and innovations such as a North American Border Pass, with biometric identifiers. Bush has repeatedly said he favors a temporary worker program, while at the same time supporting a strengthening of borders, as he outlined in his latest Saturday radio address, saying he supports new spending for tightened borders but also a temporary worker program to "create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do."

Some 750,000 illegal immigrants arrive in the United States each year, and there are now about 12 million illegal immigrants in the country (Pew Hispanic Center). Bills generated by each side of Congress represent opposing sides of the immigration issue. The House of Representatives passed a bill in December proposing tough measures -- including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and making it a crime to help illegal aliens -- aimed at preventing illegal immigration. The Senate judiciary committee approved a bill March 27 that would create a guest worker program for new illegal immigrants and allow illegal workers in the United States to work toward citizenship (NYT). The full Senate and House will now have to try and reconcile the two drafts. The issues surrounding immigration reform are analyzed in this CFR Background Q&A by cfr.org's Esther Pan.

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that studies policies affecting immigration and refugees, offers a side-by-side comparison of all the legislative proposals on immigration currently before Congress, as well as a comprehensive series of background briefs illuminating the major aspects of the immigration issue.

A Washington Post analysis says any immigration proposal that enacts only punitive measures would be doomed to failure because it ignores the real demand for labor in the U.S. economy. CFR Senior Fellow Jagdish N. Bhagwati says the current immigration guest worker proposal threatens a repeat performance of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to some 3 million illegal immigrants but failed to stop the flow of illegal immigration. A Congressional Research Service report analyzes the history of guest worker programs and Congressional attempts to reform immigration.

by Phyllis Schlafly
July 13, 2005

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has just let the cat out of the bag about what's really behind our trade agreements and security partnerships with the other North American countries. A 59-page CFR document spells out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."

"Community" means integrating the United States with the corruption, socialism, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada. "Common perimeter" means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

"Community" is sometimes called "space" but the CFR goal is clear: "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital, and people flow freely." The CFR's "integrated" strategy calls for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people."

The CFR document lays "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America." The "common security perimeter" will require us to "harmonize visa and asylum regulations" with Mexico and Canada, "harmonize entry screening," and "fully share data about the exit and entry of foreign nationals."

This CFR document, called "Building a North American Community," asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" and assigned "working groups" to fill in the details.

It was at this same meeting, grandly called the North American summit, that President Bush pinned the epithet "vigilantes" on the volunteers guarding our border in Arizona.

A follow-up meeting was held in Ottawa on June 27, where the U.S. representative, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, told a news conference that "we want to facilitate the flow of traffic across our borders." The White House issued a statement that the Ottawa report "represents an important first step in achieving the goals of the Security and Prosperity Partnership."

The CFR document calls for creating a "North American preference" so that employers can recruit low-paid workers from anywhere in North America. No longer will illegal aliens have to be smuggled across the border; employers can openly recruit foreigners willing to work for a fraction of U.S. wages.

Just to make sure that bringing cheap labor from Mexico is an essential part of the plan, the CFR document calls for "a seamless North American market" and for "the extension of full labor mobility to Mexico."

The document's frequent references to "security" are just a cover for the real objectives. The document's "security cooperation" includes the registration of ballistics and explosives, while Canada specifically refused to cooperate with our Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

To no one's surprise, the CFR plan calls for massive U.S. foreign aid to the other countries. The burden on the U.S. taxpayers will include so-called "multilateral development" from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, "long-term loans in pesos," and a North American Investment Fund to send U.S. private capital to Mexico.

The experience of the European Union and the World Trade Organization makes it clear that a common market requires a court system, so the CFR document calls for "a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution." Get ready for decisions from non-American judges who make up their rules ad hoc and probably hate the United States anyway.

The CFR document calls for allowing Mexican trucks "unlimited access" to the United States, including the hauling of local loads between U.S. cities. The CFR document calls for adopting a "tested once" principle for pharmaceuticals, by which a product tested in Mexico will automatically be considered to have met U.S. standards.

The CFR document demands that we implement "the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico." That's code language for putting illegal aliens into the U.S. Social Security system, which is bound to bankrupt the system.

Here's another handout included in the plan. U.S. taxpayers are supposed to create a major fund to finance 60,000 Mexican students to study in U.S. colleges.

To ensure that the U.S. government carries out this plan so that it is "achievable" within five years, the CFR calls for supervision by a North American Advisory Council of "eminent persons from outside government . . . along the lines of the Bilderberg" conferences.

The best known Americans who participated in the CFR Task Force that wrote this document are former Massachusetts Governor William Weld and Bill Clinton's immigration chief Doris Meissner. Another participant, American University Professor Robert Pastor, presented the CFR plan at a friendly hearing of Senator Richard Lugar's Foreign Relations Committee on June 9.

Ask your Senators and Representatives which side they are on: the CFR's integrated North American Community or U.S. sovereignty guarded by our own borders.

The CFR can't see any reason for the U.S. to remain a sovereign nation. That's why I can't see any reason for the CFR to exist.

Our leaders talk of allowing all illegal aliens to stay. As if that weren't bad enough, they want guest-worker permits on top of that. Yep, you guessed it, according to them we don't have enough Mexican citizens living in the United States already.

10, 20, 30 million, whatever the actual figure is for illegal aliens in our nation today, it's not enough. Millions more must be allowed to enter.

Listen to Bush. Paraphrased: "If we had better laws regulating those who want to come here and hold down jobs U.S. Citizens won't do, there would be no illegal immigration."

Think about this. Best estimates reveal that between three and five million illegal immigrants come across our border every year now. In order to alleviate this, we would have to allow work permits to between three and five million people per year. In five years, we'd let in another fifteen to twenty-five million.

Now think about this. If it were as easy as filling out a form to come here, would between three and five million be the max? No, if folks would venture to cross the desert under extreme peril, they're mightily driven to come. If the method were easier, the actual numbers would be more like seven to ten million per year. In ten years that would amount to 70 to 100 million. No, Mexico would NOT be the only nation. We would be swamped!

Now, can anyone else see how our nation could almost overnight become 60% Mexican or at the very least 60 to 70% Central and South American?

Then you have to count the immediate family members that would be allowed to come over once their ankor 'guest-worker' was established.

Our leaders are talking glibly about the complete swamping of our nation in ten to twenty years. We could see as much as 100 to 200 million more people in our nation.

Who in their right mind would sign on to this. Whatever happened to calls for reasonable growth in order to save this planet? Boy has their tune changed.

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