Breaking Out of the Box

The fund won't end illegal immigration overnight or even in a decade. But if the investment eventually helps Mexico to achieve 6 percent growth rates, double those of its northern neighbors, the income gap will be reduced by 20 percent in just the first decade. Only then will Mexicans begin to think about their future in Mexico rather than plan for an exit north.

This is just one piece of the regional puzzle. To compete with a rising Asia, North America needs a customs union that will end needless inspections of legal goods circulating among the three countries. A North American Regulatory Commission could promote shared goals in health care, protecting the environment and improving conditions in the workplace. Such a panel would also eliminate nonsensical discrepancies in the laws of the three nations that, for instance, bar Americans from buying drugs from a Canadian pharmacist even if the medicine was made in the United States.

The dividends accruing from a true North American Community would not be measured strictly in dollars. Instead of defining security exclusively in terms of fences and border guards, Canadian, Mexican and U.S. officials should create a broader perimeter around the entire region. Teams of officials from all three countries could share intelligence and terrorist watch lists and standardize inspection procedures used at ports of entry. These steps would be intended to supplement rather than replace existing border-protection systems.

To be sure, there is little prospect that these initiatives will be approved in the near future. The Bush administration remains preoccupied by the quagmire in Iraq and mushrooming fiscal and trade deficits. The Canadian prime minister lacks a working majority in Parliament, and Mexico is heading into a presidential election this summer that will choose Vicente Fox's successor.

But the idea of a North American Community is so compelling in my view that it will emerge, one hopes sooner rather than later, as a cutting-edge issue. The question is not whether such a community is likely. The question is whether it is desirable and will lead to a more secure and competitive North America. The answer is a resounding yes on both counts. Bush, Fox and Harper face a choice in Cancún. They can pose for the photographers and pretend that relations among their countries have never been better. Or they can seize the North American opportunity and put their nations firmly on the road to a safer and more prosperous future.

PASTOR is the director of the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of "Toward a North American Community: Lessons From the Old World for the New."

© 2006