EU-style union coming to a continent near you
Pastor Dale Morgan
EU-style union coming to a continent near you*
'Working groups led by DHS should now [be] driven by a single agenda:
the SPP'
Posted: March 21, 200
A memo signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff implements a controversial program condemned by critics as a
precursor to a European Union-style partnership with Mexico and Canada.
The document shows the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, is
being directed at the highest level of the Bush administration, says the
public interest group Judicial Watch, which obtained it and other
documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Sept. 22, 2005, memo describes the agencies within the Department of
Homeland Security responsible for executing the security agenda of the SPP.
Titled "Implementation Memorandum for the (SPP)," the document says the
SPP "has, in addition to identifying a number of new action items,
comprehensively rolled up most of our existing homeland security-related
policy initiatives with Canada and Mexico, and ongoing action and
reporting in the various U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico working groups led
by DHS should now be driven by a single agenda: the SPP."
"These new records prove the Security and Prosperity Partnership is
being directed by officials at the very highest levels of the United
States government," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Fitton said Americans "should know that the SPP is a core policy
initiative for many agencies in our government, including the Department
of Homeland Security."
The records obtained by Judicial Watch also contain an information paper
describing 10 "Prosperity Pillar Working Groups" and the organization of
the "U.S.-Mexico Critical Infrastructure Protection Work Group."
Judicial Watch said that unlike previous records produced by other
federal agencies, the DHS records are heavily redacted, blocking out
names of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian government officials carrying
out the partnership's agenda across all three countries.
The DHS also released a 10-page chart listing 36 "SPP Security
High-Level Working Groups" that include the "Mexico-U.S. Repatriation
Technical WG," the "Mexico-U.S. Intelligence and Information Sharing
WG," and the "Canada-U.S. Cross Border Crime Forum."
In October, it was reported that about 1,000 documents obtained in a
FOIA request to the SPP showed bureaucrats from agencies throughout the
Bush administration meeting regularly with their counterparts in the
Canadian and Mexican governments to engage in a broad rewriting of U.S.
administrative law and regulations.
It was first reported about the SPP activity last summer, showing the
Bush administration had launched extensive working-group activity to
implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada.
The groups, working under the North American Free Trade Agreement office
in the Department of Commerce, are to implement an agreement signed by
President Bush, then-Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian
Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.
The trilateral agreement, signed as a joint declaration not submitted to
Congress for review, led to the creation of the SPP.
An SPP report to the heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, --
released June 27, 2005 -- lists some 20 different working groups
spanning a wide variety of issues ranging from e-commerce, to aviation
policy, to borders and immigration, involving the activity of multiple
U.S. government agencies.
The working groups have produced a number of memorandums of
understanding and trilateral declarations of agreement.