Article published Jul 19, 2007
The politics of amnesty

From the Washington Times

July 19, 2007

By Ian de Silva – Despite the ignominious fall of the Senate immigration bill a couple of weeks ago, a lot of amnesty supporters remain incorrigibly misguided about things.

In the postmortem assessments by some of them, we are told that Republicans would suffer the most in the election next year due to a backlash from Hispanics. But the bill was squashed not only by Republican hands — joining them were 15 Democrats and one Independent, without whose opposition the bill would have passed.

In any case, it is worthwhile to examine the claim that Republicans would lose large numbers of the Hispanic vote. The simple fact is that there is no evidence to support the idea that a majority of Hispanics — or any other nonwhite ethnic group — would vote Republican in the first place. You do not need a Ph.D. in political science to expose such a fallacy — you only need a basic understanding of why most minorities, including immigrants, vote the way they do.

Such an understanding comes to me rather easily since I myself am an immigrant — and a naturalized American voter who takes the franchise seriously. I am also an unabashed conservative. Given my Third World provenience, most observers would expect me to cast my lot with America’s liberals, the putative guardians of minorities. But I knew early on that liberalism could not answer even some basic questions about reality.

If all cultures were equal, as many liberals claim, then why would immigrants need to come here to improve their lives? If Third World cultures are not inferior to Western civilization, then why are those cultures failing to produce economic opportunities for their young? Liberals have no clear answers to such questions, instead choosing to blame the West for everything that is wrong with the rest of the world. This is much like blaming a cheetah for a tortoise’s failure to run fast.

Liberals’ claim of multicultural equality is endearing to most Third World immigrants and disaffected native minorities. After all, such a claim boosts the immigrants’ image of their own country, often to the point of forgetting why they left it in the first place. Liberal support for practices such as bilingualism further cements immigrants’ pride in their native culture. And for those immigrants and minorities who lean on government help to get ahead — via affirmative-action programs, etc. — there are no better friends than big-government liberals, i.e., Democrats.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are rather unabashed in their defense of the Western civilization, and they view the Third World for what it really is — a cultural backwater. (Such intellectual honesty is usually too much for the effeminate sensibilities of liberals — many of whom have been educated beyond their intelligence and have lost all common sense.) There is no easy way for conservatives to attract a majority of immigrant or minority votes. The notion of American exceptionalism — which is the cynosure of American conservatism — is fundamentally at odds with the liberal notion of multicultural equality.

The claim that Republicans will suffer a backlash from Hispanics in future elections implies that if the Senate amnesty bill had become law, then Hispanics would vote in droves for Republicans, since some of the most visible supporters of the bill have been Republicans (President Bush, Sen. John McCain, etc). But history tells us otherwise. There is no better instance of that than the 1996 general election.

Why 1996? Well, it has to do with the 1986 amnesty — the largest amnesty in U.S. history, which legalized almost 3 million illegal aliens, most of whom were Hispanic. Under that amnesty, most of the applicants got green cards in the years 1988 through 1991. After the green card, a five-year residence was required for U.S. citizenship; therefore, the erstwhile illegal aliens became eligible to vote for the first time in the 1996 election.

Keep in mind that the 1986 amnesty was championed by a Republican, Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, and signed into law by a Republican, President Reagan.

Well, how did the vote turn out in 1996? Only 21 percent of Hispanic voters voted Republican — whereas 72 percent voted Democratic.

If that is not enlightening enough, consider this — the Republican running for president that year, Bob Dole, voted for the amnesty in 1986, when he was the Senate majority leader.

So much for the supposed gratitude of minorities toward Republican acts of goodwill. So much for the expectation that the newly naturalized citizens would bring large numbers of fellow Hispanics to vote Republican.

Nevertheless, some myopic Republicans still argue that it would be politically advantageous for Republicans if they had embraced the recent amnesty bill. The trouble with that argument is that it is predicated on perpetual pandering. Let us assume the unlikely scenario that the Senate amnesty bill passed and a lot of Hispanics voted Republican as a result. But what would be the next concession to Hispanics to keep them voting Republican? A Republican platform supporting Spanish as the official language of the United States?

The death of the amnesty bill can only be an asset to Republicans. There is no doubt that the 10 million to 20 million illegal aliens (i.e., future Democrats) that the bill would have legalized would push the Republican Party into extinction.

Ian de Silva is an engineer who has side interests in politics and history.

The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada (Hardcover)
by Jerome R., Ph.D. Corsi (Author)

Order here.

My Marietta Daily Journal column today. I have added several hyperlinks to educate the reader.

Don’t just secure the borders…ENFORCE THE LAW
Original link here.

D.A. King

It began the day after the U.S. Senate wisely stopped this year’s attempt to repeat the amnesty for illegal aliens of 1986: The question -from nearly everywhere – was repeatedly asked: “What’s next?”

What’s next? A reasonable question, but the obvious answer is not any different now than it was three weeks ago, three years ago or even thirty years ago.

So some observations and recommendations on “what’s next.”

Secure the borders and enforce the law.

If you listened to some radio talk show hosts who, a year ago, could not explain the difference between an anchor baby and a Mexican-issued ID card for illegals, called a Matricula consular – or between a guest-worker program and an immigration acceleration bill, the answer to, “What’s next after defeating amnesty-again?” is that “We win!”

Having won, let’s secure our borders.

Some are saying that if we secure our borders, it then will be perfectly acceptable to grant another amnesty to the more than 20 million illegal aliens in our nation.

Wrong answer.

That many elected officials have similar responses when asked, “What’s next” should be a point of great attention in the coming elections.

It isn’t “Secure the borders first,” it is “Secure the borders and enforce the law.

Period.

As Americans, we did win. But merely a very key battle, not the ongoing struggle to stop the official act of lowering American wages and opening our borders to the free flow of people that is so desperately sought by those whose focus is the quarterly profit report and political advancement.

As the strongest nation on the planet, we could stop illegal immigration next month – if our president had the will. But we would still be left with the fact that more than 40 percent of the illegals presently in our country did not enter illegally. They simply came here on a visa and never left as promised.

Granting them amnesty – ever, secured borders or not – is a message to the entire world that if you can just make it into the United States, you will eventually obtain the most coveted status on the planet: Legal American residency and an eventual path to citizenship.

American citizenship is not a political commodity or a reward for having evaded apprehension.

From the Democrats in Congress, ever expectant of future votes from the presently “un-legal,” the answer to what’s next is to attempt to grant smaller, hopefully unnoted, amnesties that were quietly written into the fine print of the recently defeated “whole enchilada” amnesty.

Soon to come, again, will be little-known amnesty attempts such as the DREAM ACT, an amnesty for illegal aliens who have enjoyed at least part of the free K-12 education that American law requires, regardless of immigration status. With a path to citizenship if they take an American’s seat in college, or serve in the military. An all-volunteer military is a tribute to the nation. But a “Foreign Legion” is not.

What’s next for others in Congress is something called the AgJOBS amnesty. As you may guess, it is an amnesty for those illegals who would swear they have worked in our national agriculture industry.

Expect applicants to guarantee that they have been picking pineapples from very tall trees in Vermont for years.

Expect them to produce the fraudulent documents to prove as much.

For people in the illegal alien advocacy industry like Jerry Gonzalez of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, an announced “what’s next” item is to sponsor voter registration drives. An admirable endeavor, but somehow suspect when publicly stated that to win the next amnesty battle with voter strength, the registration effort should be focused on very definite ethnic groups.

Absent the promised federal enforcement of American immigration and employment laws, what’s next should be a very united effort at local enforcement of those laws.

Here in Cobb, we are fortunate to have a sheriff who has seen what’s next for quite awhile. Sheriff Neil Warren has taken advantage of available tools and graduated six deputies from federal training to expand their existing authority to multiply the effect of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Warren is the only law enforcement officer in Georgia to have done so.

What’s next is that every candidate for public office should demonstrate the same courage and commitment to the rule of law.

That’s “what’s next.”

D.A. King is president of the Marietta-based non-profit Dustin Inman Society, which is actively opposed to illegal employment and illegal immigration. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

WorldNetDaily.com
How open borders turn Americans into roadkill
Illegals drive up highway deaths as U.S. hits new highs for unlicensed, uninsured motorists

(From last August…but still true today)

WASHINGTON – Marcos Ramos Medina was driving his 1997 Chevrolet Lumina erratically, according to witnesses, swerving several times across the center line, causing a tractor-trailer rig to jackknife in Yakima, Wash., Aug. 4, 2005.

That was before his car plowed into the 2000 Lexus driven by Peggy Keller, 53, dean of distance education at Yakima Valley College, who was killed in the head-on crash.

Prosecutors in his vehicular homicide trial contended Medina was coming down from a methamphetamine high. When Russell T. “Todd” Sharpe, a six-year Washington State Patrol officer, testified that Medina fought against his restraints while being taken to the hospital for a blood alcohol test and refused to answer questions, the case against the Mexican national with a criminal record who had twice been deported was declared a mistrial because his constitutional right to remain silent had been violated.

“It pains me greatly, but in this case I must exercise an abundance of caution,” explained Judge James P. Hutton.

Little caution, critics say, is being exercised when it comes to preventing mayhem on America’s highways as the country witnesses record high numbers of unlicensed, unregistered, uninsured drivers – millions of whom are illegal aliens like Medina.

While no one – in or out of government – tracks traffic accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year’s 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens.

A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers.

MORE here.

The below letter to the editor was published in the Dalton ( Georgia) Citizen newspaper on July 12, 2007 in response to this: “A LAME HAMMER: JIMMY ESPY” from the executive editor of that paper, Mr. Jimmy Espy. I have added some hyperlinks to educate the reader.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES HAVE AUTHORITY TO ACT

According to a 2002 finding from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the inherent authority of local police to make immigration arrests is quite clear.

The local authority to enforce immigration laws is also outlined in the 2006 “State and Local Police Enforcement of federal Immigration Laws: A Tool Kit for Advocates” published by the National Council of La Raza, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Mexican Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Immigration Forum and the National Immigration Law Center.

None of which can be accused of being any part of some local “Send ‘em all back to Mexico Club”.

Section 287 g of the1996 Immigration and Nationality Act allows for federal training to expand the existing and inherent authority of local police – in the course of their normal daily duties – to act as multipliers for the federal government to punish violators of American immigration law.

Jurisdictions which have taken advantage of the training, including Mecklenburg County North Carolina, report that not only does the expanded authority serve to get criminal illegal aliens off the street, but also as a deterrent to more illegal newcomers moving into the community.

Most Americans regard fewer illegals in their communities as a good thing.

Sheriff Neil Warren of Cobb County, Georgia has recently taken advantage of the training and has graduated six deputies who now can access federal data bases to learn the immigration status of individuals who come through his jail system.

He is the first law enforcement officer in Georgia to take advantage of the federal tool.

The training is available, with DHS approval, to all local law enforcement. The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act (SB 529) only mandates that Georgia State Police be trained.

Most Georgians hope this happens sooner, rather than later.

The Georgia law, SB 529 is being copied in states across the nation and the intended effects – making Georgia less hospitable to illegal aliens and illegal employers – are being seen even now.

Georgians paying attention can hear the howls from the profiteering illegal alien lobby that illegals are liquidating their assets, and preparing to leave Georgia for friendlier states…including Mexico.

While this may represent a “lame hammer” to some, it is important to note that the crisis caused by our intentionally unsecured borders did not happen overnight and cannot be solved overnight.

Attrition of the illegal population through enforcement of existing laws will take some time.

Open borders in a welfare state is a very bad idea…unless one is directly profiting from the taxpayer subsidized labor and those who have packed our emergency rooms and schools, lowered our wages and made English an optional language in Georgia.

Mexico has it right: That sovereign nation uses its military to secure its own borders and deports more people each year than we do. While it may rile a few smug newspaper editors and the illegal alien/open borders lobby, most Americans, including this one, think these are good ideas and recognize the obvious: Enforcement works.

D.A. King
Marietta, Ga.

King is president of the Marietta-based non-profit Dustin Inman Society, which is actively opposed to illegal immigration. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress’ nonpartisan research arm, defines a sanctuary city as one that “promotes policies that ensure [illegal] aliens … will not be turned over to federal authorities.”

Referring to the hearing testimony of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., Feinstein argued, however, the sentences for Ramos and Compean “are more than most people serve for murder.”

WorldNetDaily.com

Sutton grilled in Ramos-Compean hearing

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein concluded a Senate hearing today on the high-profile prosecution of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean with a vow to look further into why prosecutors charged the men with a violation that requires a mandatory 10-year sentence.

Chairing the Senate judiciary committee hearing, Feinstein questioned the decision to charge the agents under 18 United States Code section 924(c)(1)(a), which requires the harsh sentence for using or carrying a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence.

Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively, after a jury convicted them of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a drug smuggler as he fled back to Mexico after driving across the border with 742 pounds of marijuana in February 2005. U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton’s office gave the smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, immunity to serve as the government’s star witness and testify against the border agents….more here.

Miami Herald

Illegal aliens wave anchor babies to fight enforcment…

IMMIGRATION
Kids taking immigration quest to D.C.
An activist goes to D.C. to fight for the rights of U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
BY CASEY WOODS
cwoods@MiamiHerald.com

With no immigration overhaul in sight in Congress, immigration advocates have joined a South Florida activist’s quixotic quest to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to stop deporting the [illegal alien… criminal] parents of American- born children [aka anchor babies]. — Today, Nora Sandigo and a passel of kids — including Saul Arellano…

read the rest HERE.

From the July issue of Governing Magazine:

Excerpt from the below article:

Chip Rogers, the author of SB 529, thinks it’s a mistake to dwell on the issue or even on the question of whether illegal immigrants help or hurt the economy or pay more in taxes than they use. “The law is not for sale,” he says. “If someone is in violation of the law and they realize that Georgia is going to enforce the law and they make a decision not to be in Georgia because they don’t want to abide by the law, to me, that’s a good thing.”

COVER STORY/IMMIGRATION

Crackdown

Immigration pressures are rearranging politics in more than one state capitol.

By JOSH GOODMAN

When the subject of illegal immigration comes up, the states you think about first are Texas and California. Maybe Arizona. But, as of July 1, it is Georgia, a full thousand miles from the Mexican border, that is at the center of the immigration debate in the United States.

That’s because SB 529, its new immigration law now taking effect, is the most stringent statute of its kind anywhere in the country. It is the sort of law that immigration hard-liners would like to see enacted on a national basis. Under its provisions, state and local government agencies have to verify the legal residency of benefit recipients. Many employers will have to do the same whenever they make a hiring decision. Law enforcement officers are given authority to crack down on human trafficking and fake documents. In sum, SB 529 touches every facet of state policy that relates to illegal immigrants.

The central question about the law is, obviously, whether it will work as intended and reduce the impact of undocumented newcomers on the state. But an equally important question is whether the political situation that led to SB 529 can be sustained and replicated in other places. The topic of illegal immigration has bedeviled virtually every state legislature and the U.S. Congress for years, without much substantive result. What made Georgia different was a populist uprising that all but forced the legislature to crack down on the undocumented community. If that sort of pressure gains momentum elsewhere, the near future may portend a series of state laws as strict as Georgia’s — even if Congress manages to pass an immigration bill of its own. Oklahoma and Colorado have both enacted laws with some provisions similar to SB 529 — the question is how many states will follow.

If Georgia’s experience does become a prototype for other states, it will be through the building of improbable coalitions and unlikely rivalries. In many places, the Chamber of Commerce finds itself at war with the Republican Party over immigration; Christian conservatives are unsure whom to support; and union members and African Americans are forced to reevaluate their ties to Democrats.

These rivalries played out in Georgia, where businesses did not want to be deprived of a source of cheap labor. “The concern,” says Bryan Tolar, vice president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council, “is that the illegals would still be in the United States, but that we might not have any of the migrant workers — those who are here legally and those who are here illegally.” Even more than that, businesses did not want the state to turn them into residency-status enforcers, creating bureaucratic obstacles every time they take on a new employee.

But the Republican legislative majority that created the law felt little obligation to the corporate community. Senator Chip Rogers, the sponsor of SB 529, says openly that he doesn’t care whether big business opposes him because of his immigration views. “I blame 90 percent on employers,” Rogers says. “They’re the ones that are profiting by breaking the law.” He thinks many businesses, especially smaller ones, agree with him. They would prefer to hire legal workers, he says, and don’t want to be at competitive disadvantage with those that hire illegal ones. He thinks industry groups are out of touch with the views of ordinary Georgians, including rank-and-file Republicans.

Nor did SB 529 owe its success to Christian conservatives, the other pillar of Republican political strength in recent years. Nationally, the Christian right is ambivalent on immigration, conflicted by conservative principles that say lawbreaking should never be tolerated, and Biblical admonitions to provide charity to the “least among us.” Some religious conservatives quietly supported SB 529, but they were not major players in the debate that led to its passage.

So who provided the momentum for the nation’s toughest immigration law? “It really was the people,” says Phil Kent, a Georgia conservative activist who also serves as national spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control. “It was people walking up to their legislators and saying, ’I’m sick and tired of what’s going on in my neighborhood.’ ”

This line, echoed time and again by supporters of SB 529, is part bluster — almost every politician says the people are behind him — and part truth. The reality is that most of the powerful groups in the state, be they conservative Christians and big business on the right or African-American leaders on the Democratic side, didn’t really want a crackdown on illegal immigration, but every opinion poll showed that most Georgians did.

FULL-TIME CRUSADER

If there’s one person that Kent and Rogers have in mind when they talk about “the people,” it’s D.A. King, although he is anything but a typical Georgian. Since giving up his career as an insurance agent in 2003, King has been a full-time opponent of illegal immigration. From his home in a peaceful suburban neighborhood in Marietta, with an American flag flying in front and another one in back, King blogs against amnesty, organizes protests, writes a newspaper column and fields questions from reporters. When the legislature is in session, he spends most of his time at the Capitol in Atlanta. “My typical day is 14, 16 hours long,” King says. “I work seven days a week if my wife can’t drag me out on a Saturday.”

Marathon hours not withstanding, there’s probably an aspiring D.A. King in most states. What’s unusual about Georgia is that legislators cared just as much about his views as they did about the views of Chamber of Commerce lobbyists. Matt Towery, a former Georgia state representative who now operates a polling and political news company, has as good an explanation as anyone as to why this came about.

There is a lot more HERE.

Note: The only Americans who want to conquer Canada ( or merge with that paradise to our south, Mexico)are the treasonous elite who are wiling to open our borders for the almighty dollar.

Please read my 2006 AJC guest column on the reasons for Bush’s refusal to secure our borders HERE. Video from CNN here.

Excerpt from below report from Canada…

In America, the US Chamber of Commerce jumped on the bandwagon, becoming an important supporter of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This backing was evident when Thomas Donohue, the President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, made these comments while speaking at a luncheon in Washington DC on June 16, 2006, “…for CEOs, North America is already a single market, and business decisions are no longer made with a Mexico strategy – or a Canada strategy – but, rather, with a North American strategy…

Conquering Canada: The Elite Re-Configuration of North America
By Carl Teichrib

“The acquisition of Canada this year…will be a mere matter of marching…”
– Thomas Jefferson

Disbelief was the first emotion. Not because I didn’t comprehend the message, but because of the brazen nature of the broadcast. After the evening news was over, I immediately placed phone calls to friends in the United States. Was it on your evening news? Did you see it?

The response was the same regardless of which state I called. No, there’s nothing about this story here. Are you sure it exists?

While America appeared to have a news blackout in early 2005, flashed coast-to-coast across Canada was a report of monumental significance: a story that will impact every citizen of Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

The piece that caught my breath was the proclamation of an unveiling. The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations would be releasing a study on integrating the continent, a move that would take us well beyond NAFTA. For the observant, it was clear that all three nations would have to re-configure their priorities.

Released in early 2005, the CFR document titled Building A North American Community would eventually trigger a ground swell of criticism in the United States. Over the next two years, a variety of watchdog and citizen organizations would voice concerns that continental harmonization would be an affront to national Sovereignty, with a dozen or so states introducing bills of opposition. Adding fuel to this fire was the realization that other integration programs have been underway with little public knowledge or debate.

One such initiative, which coincided with the emergence of the CFR report, is the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Known by its acronym as SPP, this federally generated tri-national pact surfaced during the March 2005 meeting between the leaders of the three NAFTA nations: Vicente Fox, George Bush, and Paul Martin.

Meant to tighten economic and security ties, SPP pushes the removal of barriers to energy and resource flows, and welcomes the creation of institutions to facilitate North American integration. Furthermore, SPP consultation meetings and its spin-off body, the North American Competitiveness Council, are comprised of major representatives from federal agencies and key multinational corporate players. It’s a merger of sorts, not just amongst nations, but also between federal authorities and multinational corporations – all bonding to achieve the quest of regional harmonization.

Another case in point is NASCO, a trilateral coalition made up of provincial/state and local governments, along with major businesses such as Lockheed Martin. The goal of NASCO is mammoth: it envisions a superhighway running from Winnipeg, Manitoba through to Kansas City, San Antonio, and on to Guadalajara and Manzanillo, Mexico, eating up an incredible amount of concrete, steel, and capital.

Unlike other roads, this corridor, if realized, would be a comprehensive energy and commerce jugular vein propelling tri-national interdependence in transportation, trade, and strategic resources. According to two papers released by NASCO, this entire system will be monitored by a sweeping architecture of high-tech sensors and tracking systems, all channelled into US Homeland Security.

This is not a small idea, but one with grand scope and reach. Moreover, integration initiatives, be they found in the political or business realm, haven’t occurred in a vacuum. Continental unification is not an overnight phenomenon.

Economic ideas supporting a common North American home have been circulating for years. In 1991, the Dallas Federal Reserve issued a working paper examining the potential for a single North American currency. Later in the 1990’s, Canada’s central bank released a string of documents on the pros and cons of economic and monetary harmonization. And in 1999, Canada’s Fraser Institute published a report openly proposing a single tri-national currency as a counterbalance to Europe’s euro. This new North American dollar, it was suggested, should be called the “amero.”

So it wasn’t a surprise that by the year 2000 at least one US Treasury official, Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, Edwin M. Truman, candidly suggested a “dramatic decline in the number of independent currencies in the world.” This comment, made before the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, was directly aimed at North America’s financial structure.

Later that fall, the Atlanta Federal Reserve published an article in its Economic Review debating what final form a tri-national currency would take. This issue not only stated “that a single currency for NAFTA countries is possible,” but also that “the idea of a single currency for NAFTA is on the table.” After all, in July 2000, Mexican President Vicente Fox proposed a North American common market, incorporating a customs union, the free flow of goods and labour, and a continental monetary policy. Additionally, the newly inaugurated US President, George Bush, had earlier pledged to foster hemispheric integration while attending the Quebec Summit of the Americas.

Indeed, creating a North American economic space appeared to be a serious topic in federal circles until late summer, 2001. Only days before the 9/11 terror attacks, Fox and Bush met in Washington to discuss Mexico’s role as a US and continental partner, with migrant labour issues at the forefront. September 11, obviously, changed Washington’s focus to more distant shores.

Ironically, as 9/11 shifted the eyes of the US executive branch towards the Middle East, corporate elites embraced North American integration as a lesson learned. Keep in mind that our tri-national trade is staggering, with Canada and the US alone constituting the largest bi-national economic relationship on the planet. To give a sense of this relationship: just the yearly trade passing through one US/Canadian border crossing, the Windsor/Detroit station, is more then the total annual US trade with Japan.

September 11 threw this essential commerce into chaos. As approximately 50 million dollars (US) per hour went missing due solely to the Canadian/US border closures after the attack, and with subsequent bottlenecks and slowdowns reverberating long afterwards, financial and business executives looked to continental harmonization as a way of avoiding similar loss scenarios.

In America, the US Chamber of Commerce jumped on the bandwagon, becoming an important supporter of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This backing was evident when Thomas Donohue, the President and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, made these comments while speaking at a luncheon in Washington DC on June 16, 2006, “…for CEOs, North America is already a single market, and business decisions are no longer made with a Mexico strategy – or a Canada strategy – but, rather, with a North American strategy…I think it’s pretty clear by now that it no longer makes sense to talk about US competitiveness and Mexican competitiveness – or, for that matter, about the competitiveness of Canada. We are all in this together – we, as North Americans.”

The rest here.