This is a "mind-boggling concept," exploded Lou Dobbs. It must cause Americans to think our political and academic elites have "gone utterly mad." What had detonated the mild-mannered CNN anchor?

Dr. Robert Pastor, vice chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on North America, had just appeared before a panel of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations -- to call for erasing all U.S. borders and a merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada in a North American union stretching from Prudhoe Bay to Guatemala.

Under the Pastor-CFR plan, the illegal alien invasion would be solved by eliminating America's borders and legalizing the invasion. We would no longer defend the Rio Grande.

"What we need to do," Pastor instructed, "is forge a new North American Community. ... Instead of stopping North Americans on the borders, we ought to provide them with a secure, biometric Border Pass that would ease transit across the border like an E-Z pass permits our cars to speed through tolls."

The Pastor-CFR project, for "economic integration" of Mexamerica, is on the drawing board. North-south highways and railways would be built to weld us together as the American Union was welded together by the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, and Ike's Interstate Highway System.

Speaking in Madrid in 2002, Mexican President Vicente Fox declared: "Our long-range objective is to establish with the United States ... an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes as important as ... the freedom of movement of capital, goods, services and persons. The new framework we wish to construct is inspired in the example of the European Union."

Critical element of the Fox post-NAFTA agenda: absolute freedom of movement for persons between Mexico and the United States -- a merger of the nations. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Debrez put it succinctly in April 2005. What Mexico is about is "complete integration" of the two nations.

To appreciate what Fox, Debrez, Pastor and the CFR wish America to merge with, consider a few excerpts from the State Department information sheet on Mexico.

While hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens marched beneath Mexican flags in U.S. cities on May Day to demand amnesty, Mexico's constitution "prohibits political activities by foreigners, and such actions may result in detentions and deportations."

"Crime in Mexico continues at high levels, and it is often violent, especially in Mexico City, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo (and) Acapulco," State warns U.S. travelers. "Low apprehension rates and conviction rates of criminals contribute to the high crime rate." Continued...