Independent Task Force On North America

Christine Romans has the report. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country. ROBERT PASTOR, IND. TASK FORCE ON NORTH AMERICA: The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada, but at the borders of North America as a whole. ROMANS: That's the view in a report called "Building a North American Community." It envisions a common border around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three countries, and a freer flow of goods and people. Task force member Robert Pastor. PASTOR: What we hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America, so as to ease the travel of people within North America. ROMANS: Buried in 49 pages of recommendations from the task force, the brief mention, "We must maintain respect for each other's sovereignty." But security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that sovereignty. FRANK GAFFNEY, CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY: That's what would happen if anybody serious were to embrace this strategy for homogenizing the United States and its sovereignty with the very different systems existing today in Canada and Mexico. ROMANS: Especially considering Mexico's problems with drug trafficking, human smuggling and poverty. Critics say the country is just too far behind the U.S. and Canada to be included in a so-called common community. But the task force wants military and law enforcement cooperation between all three countries. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Indeed, an exchange of personnel that bring Canadians and Mexicans into the Department of Homeland Security. ROMANS: And it wants temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility of labor between the three countries in the next five years. (END VIDEOTAPE) ROMANS: The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union. Yet, just this week, voters in two major countries in the European Union voted against upgrading -- updating the European constitution. So clearly, this is not the best week to be trying to sell that idea. DOBBS: Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don't have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It's astonishing. ROMANS: The theory here is that we are stronger together, three countries in one, rather than alone. DOBBS: Well, it's a -- it's a mind-boggling concept. Christine Romans, thank you, as always. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ldt.html [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 22, 2005]

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