| 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.
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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.
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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.”
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The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC)
an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups
laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to
create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
The SPP agreement was signed by Bush,
President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex.,
on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working
Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized
a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico
border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in
bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes
that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed
this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed
bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter
the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.
The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still,
Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the
full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating
a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision
to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons
on the part of the Bush Administration.
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.
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