What Happened in Guadalajara

by Phyllis Schlafly
August 21, 2009

President Obama went to Guadalajara, Mexico in August as part of his promise to "rejoin the World Community" and become a "citizen of the world." He participated in a conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
These cozy meetings of the so-called three amigos used to be labeled the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The three North American heads of state met in Waco in 2005, in Cancun in 2006, in Quebec in 2007, and in New Orleans in 2008.
After conservatives exposed the mischievous goals, the amigos accepted the Hudson Institute's helpful suggestion to change their name. Now they call themselves the North American Leaders Summit.
Prestigious internationalist think tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hudson Institute, and the Center for Strategic & International Studies, explained the real purpose of these high-level get-togethers. These meetings were planned to be the first steps toward a North American Union modeled on the European Union, with open borders and a common currency, which Canada's Fraser Institute prematurely labeled the amero.
The words "union" and "amero" have become embarrassing, so the goal has now been identified as "economic integration" and "labor mobility." The Guadalajara joint statement reaffirmed the purpose of "integrated economies," and that still means allowing unlimited access for cheap labor from Mexico to take U.S. jobs.
President Calderon demanded unlimited "labor mobility" and asserted that it is "unthinkable" for the United States to function "without the contribution of the Mexican laborers and workers." He also wants free access for Mexican trucks to all U.S. roads and U.S. citizenship for Mexicans living illegally in the U.S.
Canada's Harper wants all three to pledge to work "together on a North American focus against climate change in order to assure and guarantee a new international covenant that is efficient and truly global." Harper also complained about the "buy American" provision in our 787 billion dollar Stimulus law.
Obama reaffirmed his commitment to pass the Cap and Trade bill so he would be hailed as a hero at the upcoming United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen. He promised to "take the lead by reducing U.S. emissions by 80 percent by 2050" and to "work with other nations to cut global emissions in half."
Obama also promised to "continue to work to fix America's broken immigration system," which most people see as code words for amnesty for illegal aliens. He did not promise to stop the flow of illegal drugs and people coming across our southern border, but he did say he wanted "to stem the illegal southbound flow of American guns and cash that helps fuel this extraordinary violence."
In other words, he was blaming the United States for Mexican drug violence. In fact, most of the guns found at Mexican crime scenes are not American, and U.S. taxpayers are already generously footing the bill to train Mexicans to fight the drug war.
Fortunately, Obama did not pledge to open our roads to Mexican trucks, which may be his only concession to American public opinion so far in his presidency. Congressional law forbids the entry of Mexican trucks, and the latest Rasmussen Survey shows that 66 percent of Americans oppose lifting this congressional ban.
Under NAFTA, the United States agreed to let Mexican trucks operate freely in our country after 1999 so long as they meet U.S. safety standards. But they have never met them; and nothing in NAFTA requires us to admit trucks that don't meet U.S. standards.
Highway safety is the primary reason why Americans are adamantly opposed to allowing Mexican trucks on our roads. The problem is not only the wear and tear on our deteriorating highways from additional tens of thousands of heavier, environmentally dirtier trucks.
U.S. truck drivers are limited to ten consecutive hours of service, but Mexican drivers typically drive up to 20 hours a day. Even if limits are imposed, nobody knows how many hours they are behind the wheel before reaching the border.
In contrast to U.S. requirements for truck drivers, Mexico has no credible system of driver training, licensing, drug testing, physical and age requirements, safety inspections even for brakes, weight limits, insurance, or nationwide criminal or driving-record databases.
U.S. law requires commercial drivers to be able to "read and speak the English language sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records." But Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters testified at a Senate committee hearing last year that when Mexican drivers respond to our questions in Spanish, her employees nevertheless check the box for English-proficient.