Globalization: A solution that makes the problem worse

By Marty Lich, Vail Trail

March 22, 2006

http://www.vailtrail.com/article/20060322/OPINION/60322018

“We have a plan?”

Pay close attention to political buzzwords.

As with any well-executed plan, there are goals.

It is these globalization goals that warrant our attention.

Welcome the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) panel, held in New York, N.Y. in May 2005. Their agenda is aptly titled Globalization: Building a North American Community and it includes the belief that we should be on a fast track to complete labor mobility in the trio-country of Canada, Mexico and the United States; also called “North America.” To reach this multicultural goal, two things must happen. The panel must create “big reforms” in the south of the country, making it competitive by bringing investment in infrastructure, education and training. And they would like to see a North America border pass issued for automatic entry without inspection.

I should note that building a United States border wall has upset the CFR. This does not fit well with their North America globalization plan.

CFR also published their tri-national council task force report, which covered the expansion of the temporary migrant worker programs, demonstrating the need for a ‘temporary’ labor migration from Mexico and sharing Social Security pensions with Mexico; a plausible explanation for the guest-worker program avidly being pursued here despite the vocalized outrage from American citizens. The report also calls for implementing the American/Mexican Social Security Totalization Agreement, now being finalized. Under this new Totalization agreement with Mexico, there will be an effort to coordinate our Social Security program with yet again another country. What makes this different from the other 20 Totalization agreements is this shared Social Security retirement pension with Mexico that allows these retired ‘guest-workers’ to receive Social Security pensions after working only six fiscal quarters in the United States. American residents must work 40 fiscal quarters. Anticipated annual dollar loss to our Social Security reserves is estimated at $110 million a year per our Social Security Administration.

This council may explain part of what has American citizens shaking their heads in bewilderment. We have outsourced companies. We are grappling with controversial items such as the now withdrawn Dubai Ports World to oversee our port security. We are questioning the move towards unrestricted travel for commercial trucks between Mexico and Canada on our tax-funded roadways. And now there’s the talk of totalized social security benefits paid out to Mexican citizens living in Mexico.

The panel also offers a good vantage point for mulling over this new “multiple language immersion” movement we now see happening in our public schools. And perhaps this will help us to understand just how Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador for the Taliban, was granted a recent U.S. student visa allowing his enrollment at Yale College. This is a man who stated he is lucky to be housed at Yale instead of housed in Guatemala Bay. One cannot get much more globally ‘multicultural’ than that.

You see, the educational goals from the CFR’s task force report focuses on a “true integration” of the three combined countries' student world, including removal of language barriers and giving all students a greater sense of their “North American identity" while also delving in “imaginative ways” to build these North American connections. The panel is also encouraging foundations to promote the “sense of belonging” to the trio-country of North America. The United Nations advocates such multicultural global governance as their global responsibility. Theorist Arjun Appadurai has coined the following globalization words. Refer to his word ‘Ethnoscapes,’ meaning free global movement of all people, including tourists, immigrants, refugees, and business travellers. And ‘Financescapes,’ defined as the creation of global flows of money, interconnected currency markets, stocks and commodity markets.

Our country is moving fast with these out-sourced jobs. We are on the fast-track to multi-language acquisition in our public U.S. schools. We are once again addressing the porous U.S. borders with respect to opening them even wider.

Attend the Vail Valley Institute seminar from June 22 through Sunday, June 25, 2006; with a focus point on both immigration and globalization in Eagle County. Read through their challenging questions on the seminar overview at vailvalleyinstitute.org/empire.html.

Things are quietly plodding along according to plan, step by step. But there are a few who dare challenge its pathway. Just ask the Dubai Ports World company about that.

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