There are unseen dynamics behind that corridor plan. I believe it was part and parcel of the NAU. Any hint of that, and I’m going nowhere near the guy.
Perry was the driving force behind the Trans-Texas Corridor, which was the first major part of the American segment of the North American Super Corridor. Rudy Giuliani's lawfirm worked with Cintra (a European company picked by Perry) and the state of Texas to try and get it built. Perry was discussing the idea back in 2001, and
announced it in 2002. The Governor's office in Texas is seen as weak, but Perry was hell-bent on proving that wrong with the TTC.
You can go through the
Governor's archives of his speeches and find everything from support for open borders and healthcare for both Texans and Mexicans to praising LULAC and guest worker programs. Here's what's always struck me about Perry though - I don't think he was doing the whole NAU thing out of some kind of new world order thing, because everything he does, whether it's being soft on illegal immigration, or the HPV vaccine, tended to benefit one or more friends and associates of his. That's not to say that he doesn't have friends who support the NAU.
The corridor thing though, honestly, a lot of his friends, and not just Rudy Giuliani, stood to make a lot of money off of it, but it's a lot harder to track who all would profit from it. With things like the Merck/HPV deal or the Convergence Life Sciences scandal from a few weeks ago, you can easily find Perry friends or Perry donors to point fingers at. Perry was pushing the corridor idea back in 2001 and it's a lot harder to figure out the who. Dan Shelley, Rudy Giuliani, and others benefited, but there could have been more going on because of how massive it was.
I don't think we'll ever have a good grasp of who all would benefit. You're talking about the confiscation of 500,000 acres of land from Texans, you're talking about a foreign company controlling it, and you're talking about a project that could cost over $150 billion and take 50+ years to finish. There's a lot going on there.
I really don't think Perry has kind of evil NAU-related plans, I think he's just a typical Texas politician who helps his friends and donors out any way he can.
Thanks for the comments and the resources. I can understand you not thinking Perry was a big NAU supporter. I do however think certain efforts inevitably lead to enough harmonization that they naturally wind up facilitating unintended consequences.
I believe the push for the NAU would have been strengthened by the corridor implementation.
There is a working committee with U.S. and Mexican counterparts that meet once yearly to get the NAU on track. I believe the current emphasis is a common security game plan that would see shared border enforcements de-emphasised while exterior borders of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico would be enhanced. I’m not sure what deficiencies there are now, but that’s the big sell.
I’m not buying.
Thanks for the response.