Bush's North America summit

22 March, 2005

The leaders of Mexico and Canada will join President George W. Bush in Texas Wednesday for their first regional summit of his second term as the three nations continue efforts to fashion common security and economic initiatives and build upon the earlier North American Free Trade Agreement.

High on the agenda is border security, including efforts to better coordinate intelligence-sharing, cross-border law enforcement and counter-terrorism measures while not impeding the free flow of traffic.

According to U.S. government figures, $394 billion in goods crossed the U.S.-Canadian border alone in 2003, while U.S.-Mexican cross-border trade was around $265 billion.

That trade to the north suffered costly hiccups following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 2001, when increased security measures left trucks and their cargoes sitting for hours on both sides of the frontier awaiting clearance. Similar problems arose in the south.

But security remains paramount, with the United States fearing the long, porous borders with its neighbors leaves the United States vulnerable to undetected penetration by Islamist terrorists and others.

"I'm worried about our border," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said recently. "We now have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are crossing illegally every year. And we are now seeing a larger number of people cross our southern border who are from countries of interest as opposed to just Latin American" countries.

The current number of illegal aliens in the United States is not totally known. The figure used most often is more than 8 million, the majority from south of the border. But the number is believed to have grown and shows no sign of letting up.

Mexican President Vicente Fox, who Bush once hailed as a close friend, has hammered Bush for years to institute immigration reform to allow a freer flow of Mexican nationals into the United States, thereby providing a relief valve for an economy that cannot keep up with a growing workforce.

Speaking in Mexico City last week he said the subject would not be broached in Wednesday's talks, but some aren't so sure.

"They say the main focus is this initiative for North America, but I sense that President Fox is going to want to inject into that some appeal for a free movement of labor between Mexico and the United States," said Stephen Johnson, a Latin America expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

Bush's first-term immigration initiative, which includes a guest-worker program, is still only a proposal after running into stiff opposition in the country and Capitol Hill from both pro- and anti-immigration groups. One side says the initiative does not go far enough because it is not a general amnesty for illegal aliens already in the country; the other side opposes it because they believe it would reward those living and working in the United States in defiance of the law.

Fox cannot run for re-election. He said U.S. immigration reform, derailed by al-Qaida's terrorist attacks on the United States and the ensuing war, were a matter for Bush and Congress, yet it is clear a gesture of progress would be welcome.

"The subtext of the meeting is that Vicente Fox is beginning his own legacy project as he looks at what can be done before he leaves office," according to Christopher Sand, an analyst with the non-partisan International Republican Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "You notice he's made a lot of statements that he is in step with the Mexican public opinion on the border, even though that is not helping Bush very much."

Thorns, new and old alike, in U.S.-Canadian relations are also likely to be broached during the summit, if not by the leaders themselves then by their working delegations.

The longest-running dispute is American tariffs on soft-wood lumber from Canada. U.S. imports of Canadian beef are also blocked out of fears of mad cow disease. Those fears have resulted in Japan barring U.S. beef as well after a cow imported from Canada died of the disease.

The newest dispute is Canada's surprise decision to opt out of the administration's North American missile defense shield.

"There are a lot of bad feelings," Sands said. U.S. officials, believing earlier Canadian assurances on missile-shield cooperation and trying to accommodate Canadian concerns, feel "sandbagged," he said.

"It's ironic that we approach the summit with a lame duck in Mexico, who has no political capital to spend and just wants the spotlight, and a minority government in Canada that has no political capital to spend and is sort of hiding by the safest poll-number driven policies it can get," Sands said. "The only political leader with capital to spend is Bush, and he's not spending it on North America," other than on domestic issues such as Social Security, the economy and security.

One issue also expected in the talks, up front and open to all, is the question of joining together to better develop and exploit the North American region's energy resources. A major hiccup, however, is Mexico's reluctance to privatize its state oil monopoly, which if done could lead to the foreign investment Mexico needs not only for further energy development but also for expanding its economy.

The central venue for the summit Wednesday is not Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch. Rather, it is Baylor University in nearby Waco. The administration explained the larger venue was to accommodate each country's working delegations, a sign that there can be expected some concrete action on more doable trilateral issues, such as common passport-control procedures, cargo security and customs checks, and even beefed up cooperation on air and maritime security.

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