By Allan Wall
08/15/2007
In a few days, on August 20-21, President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon meet in Montebello, Quebec, to hold a "North American Leaders' Summit", something that is apparently necessitated by the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP).
In the past few years, much has been written about the SPP. It was set up at a 2005 Crawford, Texas meeting between President Bush and then-President Fox of Mexico and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada. (It was at a press conference held during this meeting that Bush publicly bashed the Minutemen as "vigilantes".)
Is the SPP just a framework for good neighborly relations — or is it, as its critics assert, the framework for a continental merger between our three nation-states?
In order to refute such charges the U.S. government has set up a page called "SPP Myths and Facts" on its SPP website.
Of course, the very fact this page was set up at all is an indication of real, no-mythical unrest among the U.S. population as to what our elite movers and shakers are up to.
Ironically, reading between the lines of the SPP website is not reassuring at all.
The "Myths and Facts" page describes the Security and Prosperity Partnership thusly:
"The SPP is a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders — Canada and Mexico — to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three nations through greater cooperation. …The SPP outlines a comprehensive agenda for cooperation among our three countries while respecting the sovereignty and unique cultural heritage of each nation."
The website then lists various kinds of cooperation under the rubric of the SPP: coordination of security efforts, fighting infectious diseases, working together on disasters, fighting counterfeiting and piracy, reducing trade costs and facilitating commerce.
This all sounds great — who could be against it? I favor any kind of mutually beneficial contacts with our neighbors.
And yet all these things were already going on before the SPP, which dates only from 2005. Why set up a fancy new international framework with all the high-flown rhetoric?
After the SPP’s introduction, the "myths" and "facts" begin. Each "myth" is followed by a "fact" to set the reader straight
The first "myth":
"The SPP was an agreement signed by Presidents Bush and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in Waco, TX, on March 23, 2005."
In fact, says the website:
"The SPP is a dialogue….The SPP is not an agreement nor is it a treaty. In fact, no agreement was ever signed."
Frankly, I find this distinctly disturbing. At least if the SPP were a public agreement or treaty, we could examine the contents. They could be debated publicly. A treaty would even have to be approved by the U.S. Senate.
But if no actual agreement was signed, then the substantive content of the SPP must depend upon the whims and obsessions of our president and his Canadian and Mexican counterparts.
And we've had quite enough of George W. Bush’s obsessions.
The second "myth":
"The SPP is a movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union and establish a common currency."
To which the "fact" section replies that
"The cooperative efforts under the SPP, which can be found in detail at www.spp.gov, seek to make the United States, Canada and Mexico open to legitimate trade and closed to terrorism and crime. It does not change our courts or legislative processes and respects the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The SPP in no way, shape or form considers the creation of a European Union-like structure or a common currency. The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers."
This sounds great too. But the real question is: where is this all leading? The European Union began as a trade pact, and look what it’s developed into. The historic nation-states of Europe are now losing their sovereignty to the bureaucrats of Brussels.
The third "myth":
"The SPP is being undertaken without the knowledge of the U.S. Congress."
The "fact" replies that "U.S. agencies involved with SPP regularly update and consult with members of Congress on our plans and efforts."
They do? That’s nice.
The fourth "myth":
"The SPP infringes on the sovereignty of the United States."
No, no, no! says the "facts" section. Instead —
"The SPP respects and leaves the unique cultural and legal framework of each of the three countries intact. Nothing in the SPP undermines the U.S. Constitution. In no way does the SPP infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States."
Oh, so that’s OK, then!
It all makes the SPP sound rather harmless. After all, who could object to neighborly relations with our neighbors?
Nevertheless, there is ample reason to believe that the SPP is indeed a vehicle that would lead to greater continental integration — and could actually lead to a continental merger.
That’s because it’s not just the SPP. It’s the SPP in combination with mass immigration, multiculturalism, and cheap labor profiteering. And it’s managed by an American elite (of both parties) that has shown it’s out of touch with America’s identity as a historical nation (look at the Bush-Kennedy Amnesty/Immigration Surge bill) and with her constitutional moorings.
Certainly, there are secret documents that we aren’t privy to (which some activists are striving to obtain using the Freedom of Information Act). But we don’t really need documents, we have the official SPP website. Look at the various SPP goals that website enumerates — for example these:
Obviously, lower costs are great for consumers everywhere. But what is being proposed here would of necessity involve the harmonization of law and regulation in the three countries. (So much for respecting their unique legal frameworks.)
Do we really want that? We have enough problems keeping the government from excessive meddling in our own economy!
There’s also a plan in the SPP’s "Prosperity Agenda" for transportation:
Did you notice that part about "alleviating bottlenecks at the border"? Actually, "bottlenecks" at the border can be positively desirable if they bring us the security of controlling who enters — and who doesn’t.
Besides, all those proposals about "multimodal corridors" and "reducing congestion" would be better dealt with on either a national, state, provincial or municipal level.
We can see a pattern here, can we not? Rather than having these legitimate concerns dealt with at a national, state or local level, the SPP proposes getting the national governments of all three countries involved.
The possibilities for meddling transnational bureaucrats are enormous.
I think it’s already hard to keep our government accountable in our own country. How will adding two other countries make things better?
And then there’s the "Efficient Movement of People", a favorite globalist goal. Naturally, the SPP has a proposal for that too:
"Identify measures to facilitate further the movement of business persons within North America and discuss ways to reduce taxes and other charges residents face when returning from other North American countries."
Excuse me, but isn’t there already a mechanism to deal with this — something called "U.S. immigration law"? (Or Mexican immigration law for Mexico and Canadian immigration law for Canada.)
No wonder Bush bashed the Minutemen as "vigilantes" at the 2005 meeting. The old-fashioned idea of guarding our border with Mexico simply does not fit in with the zeitgeist of the SPP.
Of course, the SPP did not pop into existence out of a vacuum. It fits in with the proposals of various influential insiders, such as Dr. Robert Pastor and others. It also fits right in with the core principles of the Bush administration, which from the outset was pushing hemispheric free trade and open borders. And it unmistakably fits in with the mindset that created the European Union.
Simply defeating the SPP is not sufficient. These kinds of globalist big government ventures flow from the worldview of our academic/business/political elite. They will keep popping up again and again under various names, as long as that worldview remains ascendant.
The bottom line: American patriots have to be vigilant. Getting these issues out into the open is a part of the solution.
But it’s not only American patriots. There are Canadians and Mexicans who also oppose SPP and continental integration, and are speaking out against it. Americans don’t want to be a part of a continental merger, but neither do our neighbors (except for the elitists of all three countries who are driving it).
In a future column, I plan to report what anti-SPP Mexicans have to say about the matter.
American citizen Allan Wall resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.