DOBBS: Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country's fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico.

Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada.

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.

 

There is no greater example than our next story as to why the United States must maintain its border security with Mexico, and importantly, secure that border absolutely. The police chief of the violent Mexican border town, Nuevo Laredo, was today executed. It was his first day on the job.

Alejandro Dominguez, seen here at his swearing-in ceremony, was ambushed by a number of gunmen several hours just after that ceremony as he left his office. The assassins fired more than three dozen rounds that struck Dominguez.

He was the only person who volunteered to become Nuevo Laredo's police chief. The position has been vacant for weeks after the previous chief of police resigned. The town is at the center of what is a violent war between Mexican drug lords. The State Department has issued two travel warnings for Americans about that area just this year. And amazingly, the Mexican government calls those State Department warnings unnecessary.