Demographic disaster: what would happen to the U.S.--economically, politically and culturally--after being absorbed into a regional government with the rest of Latin America?

Some answers to the question raised above can be deduced by briefly reviewing some of the key demographics of the nations of Central America and the Caribbean. Six nations in that region--Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic--are slated to participate with the U.S. in the envisioned Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a precursor to the FTAA:

* Of the Central American and Caribbean nations, only Costa Rica boasts a net immigration rate. In terms of net migration per 1,000 people, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic all exhibit net emigration--meaning that more people are leaving those countries than are staying.

* America's median population age is 36 and rising. The median age of the other six CAFTA nations is 25 or younger. In Honduras the median age is 19; in Guatemala, it is 18.

* Costa Rica, the wealthiest and most dynamic Central American nation, boasts a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $9,000--less than one-quarter of the U.S. per capita GDP. Costa Rica's per capita GDP is more than double that of any of its neighbors. For Honduras and Nicaragua, the respective figures are $2,600 and $2,200.

* Even in Costa Rica, one-fifth of the population lives below the poverty level (as compared with 12 percent of the U.S. population). The same is true of roughly half the citizens of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. Incredibly, seventy-five percent of Guatemala's 14 million people live below poverty level. Consider that these levels are relative to each country's own standard of living, not ours.

Taken as a region, the proposed CAFTA countries have a young, economically stymied population of 46 million people, nearly all of whom live in nations currently exporting people. One inevitable consequence of removing barriers to the unimpeded flow of migration of people--as CAFTA and the FTAA would require--would be a northward surge of young, unskilled workers to the United States.

One potential trigger for that surge could be the WTO-mandated abolition of the existing worldwide system of nation-based textile import quotas next January 1. As the August 5 Christian Science Monitor observed, "The removal of quotas amounts to a massive transfer of jobs and wealth in the developing world over the next few years":

   The change ... is already spreading
   something close to panic in dozens of
   poor countries, especially in the
   Caribbean, Central America, northern
   Africa, and Southeast Asia. Millions
   of workers could be laid off, the bulk
   of them women who sit before
   sewing machines hour after hour,
   stitching together the jeans, the blouses
   and shirts, the underwear, and
   other garments bought by Americans
   and Europeans. In China, perhaps in
   India as well, millions could win new
   jobs as as their garment business
   picks up.... The potential change: Instead
   of seeing "Made in Honduras,"
   "Made in Mexico," "Made in Taiwan,"
   and "Made in Malaysia" on
   their clothing labels, American consumers
   may find "Made in China" almost
   exclusively on everything from
   jackets to running shoes.

Where will the displaced textile workers from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala turn once their livelihood has been absorbed by China? Will they take immersion courses in Mandarin Chinese and relocate across the Pacific Ocean--or will they simply migrate northward, joining a huge and growing Latino population in the U.S.?

Poverty and Revolution

That surge would be amplified as political and economic merger envelops South America. More than half of the 83 million people residing in the nations of the proposed "Andean Free Trade Area"--Colombia, Peru and Ecuador--live below the poverty level. Once again, that is a poverty level based on their nations' standard of living, not ours.

Even in Argentina, which has the highest per capita GDP in South America ($11,200), the poverty level is 51.7 percent--a figure reflecting the devastation wrought on that once middle-class nation by economic policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

The threat of economic dislocation is coupled with a still-viable--and growing--Marxist revolutionary movement throughout Latin America:

* Brazil, a nation of nearly 200 million people, is currently ruled by Marxist Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, a boon companion to Cuban despot and terrorist chieftain Fidel Castro.

* In 1999, after hyperinflation wiped out the savings of millions of Argentines and devastated its middle class, a badly divided nation, faced with the prospect of outright anarchy, elected Marxist Fernando de la Rua as president. De la Rua immediately declared a state of emergency and handed the economic reins over to Domingo Cavallo. As the architect of Argentina's disastrous policy of pegging the peso to the dollar, Cavallo helped lead the nation to a catastrophic accumulation of household and national debt. The current Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner, demands that 75 percent of Argentina's foreign debt be forgiven, and is part of a self-described "axis" with Marxist rulers in Brazil and Venezuela.

* Oil-rich Venezuela, a member of the OPEC cartel, is ruled by Marxist Hugo Chavez, a favorite of both the Red International and the Pinstripe Proletarians of the UN-dominated "international community."

* Colombia is under siege by a Marxist insurrection headed by the FARC--a narco-terrorist group that rules a Switzerland-size portion of territory within that battered nation.

* For decades, Peru battled the Maoist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), an ultra-violent terrorist group, and its even more bloodthirsty spin-off, Tupac Amaru. Under the flawed but effective leadership of President Alberto Fujimori, Peru defeated the Marxist insurrectionists on the battlefield. In 2000, Fujimori was re-elected with a 10 percent margin of victory--only to be run out of office, and driven out of the country, as a result of bogus "election fraud" charges and a UN-led international smear campaign. In 2002, the anti-Communist Fujimori was replaced by "reformed" radical Communist Alejandro Toledo.

* Communist China's influence is growing in Panama as it consolidates its hold over the Panama Canal's anchor ports, Cristobal and Balboa. Beijing is also offering material, financial and political support to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and terrorist groups in Colombia.

Nor should it be forgotten that radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Gammaa al-Islamiya (the Armed Islamic Group) are active in South America's "triborder" region--a no man's land where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect. For decades, writes counter-terrorism analyst Jeffrey Fields, "the region has been home to various smugglers, terrorists, drug traffickers, arms dealers, and organized crime figures from Russia, Japan, China, and Nigeria.... Terrorists from the Middle East have also been found in the area, particularly from Lebanon and Syria."

A large Arab population and rampant official corruption make the tri-border region an ideal hiding place for Middle Eastern terrorists. Lax border controls--particularly between Paraguay and Brazil--offer them mobility. Needless to say, this murderous mobility would have an open highway to the north with the abolition of borders throughout the hemisphere via the FTAA.

Convergence with Chaos

Enactment of the FTAA would leave our nation naked to a fatal assault on our economy and culture. It would tear down what remains of our border just as social turmoil and revolutionary violence come to a roiling boil in Latin America. It would accelerate the export of our manufacturing sector while importing masses of unskilled laborers--thereby hastening the abolition of our own middle class. And it would set the stage for a hemisphere-spanning regional government--a continent with a feudal economy under a centralized socialist elite.

Good people blessed to live in the United States of America--and, for that matter, those in Central and South America--deserve better. Latin Americans, like people everywhere, could enjoy prosperity and material progress if they were relieved of the burden of invasive, corrupt governments all too often propped up by U.S. taxpayer bailouts.

By making timely, principled use of our republican institutions, U.S. citizens can prevent enactment of the FTAA. Not only would this help preserve our independence and our quality of life, it would be to the benefit of our long-suffering hemispheric neighbors to the south.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of
Proposed FTAA Nations

* Other 30 Western
Hemisphere countries    9.7%

Mexico                  6.0%

Canada                  6.1%

Brazil                  8.7%

United States          69.5%

* Other 30 Western
Hemisphere countries

Argentina
Columbia
Chile
Peru
Venezuela
Guatemala
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Uruguay
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Paraguay
Bolivia
Panama
Honduras
Haiti
Nicaragua
Trinidad and Tobago
Jamaica
Bahamas
Barbados
Guyana
Suriname
Belize
St. Lucia
Antigua and Barbuda
Grenada
Dominica
Saint Kitts and Nevis
St. Vincent and the
Grenadines

What would they buy? The $11 trillion U.S. Gross Domestic Product
accounts for nearly 70 percent of the aggregate GDP for the entire
Western Hemisphere. FTAA proponents insist that the merger is
necessary to open miniscule Latin American markets to U.S. exports.
This begs the following question: Would the merger result in increased
exports of U.S. consumer goods or imports of impoverished workers?

Note: Table made from pie chart.