Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the
plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide,
through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican
border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to
enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas,
bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks,
without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will
be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America.
The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only
electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will
be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port
complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to
the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
As incredible as this
plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment
of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year.
Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores
of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working
behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack
of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is
largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of
NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new
congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the
planned international corridor through the center of the country.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc.,
is a "non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world's first
international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system
along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor
to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North
America." Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still,
NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of
Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane
limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and
freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural
gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page
of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.
Kansas City SmartPort Inc.
is an "investor based organization supported by the public and private
sector" to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas
City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to
trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground
transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long
Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website
describes the plan in glowing terms: "For those who live in Kansas
City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way
of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly
far-fetched notion will become a reality."
None of this would be possible without the extensive work being done by the U.S. Department of Commerce working groups
charged with implementing by new regulations the Strategic and
Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP. The SPP agreement was
reached between President Bush, President Vicente Fox and Canadian
Prime Minister Paul Martin during their March 2005 summit meeting in Waco, Texas.
The Bush administration plan is to create a North American Union along
the model of the European Union, put in place by administrative
regulations and departmental working groups under the SPP umbrella.
On June 7, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen
ruled in favor of the Bush administration's argument that the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration lacked the authority to exercise
environmental controls to prevent Mexican trucks from openly operating
in the U.S. under NAFTA. This ruling was key in the Bush
administration's determination to open U.S. borders to Mexican trucks
under the trade agreement. Had the Supreme Court decided otherwise, the
NAFTA Super Corridor project would have suffered a setback.
I
continue to argue that a "follow the money" strategy must be utilized
to understand why President Bush has refused to close our border with
Mexico, pushing instead for "comprehensive immigration reform"
legislation that would allow the vast majority of illegal immigrants
now in the U.S. to remain under a "guest worker" or "pathway to
citizenship" provision. The underlying agenda of the Bush
administration seems to be to create a NAFTA-plus environment in which
workers, trade and capital will be allowed to flow unimpeded within the
trilateral North American community consisting of the United States,
Canada and Mexico.
A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may
be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for
Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the
heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union
workers on the docks or in the trucks.
