Expert analysis of the NAU: Dr. Jerome Corsi shares his in-depth knowledge of the effort to create one political entity out of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Dr. Jerome Corsi earned his Bachelor's Degree in Economics and Political Science from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He then earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has taught at the University of New Mexico and the University of Denver.

A journalist, Dr. Corsi coauthored Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry and Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders. By himself, he has also authored Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians. The vice president for a financial marketing firm, he and his family reside in New Jersey.

THE NEW AMERICAN: What got you started looking into the topics of terrorism and immigration?

Jerome Corsi: My interest in political science led me to study the topics of violence and terrorism. Then, after the takeover of Iran by militant Islamists in 1979, my interest intensified. Iran, of course, became the force behind Hezbollah, and I recently discovered that some Hezbollah members and supporters in Dearborn, Michigan, had entered the United States through Mexico. This led me to wonder why our southern border was not being guarded more closely.

TNA: You have coauthored a book about our porous borders with Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist. How did you and he get together?

Corsi: From afar, I admired the work the Minutemen organization was doing in aiding the Border Patrol. So I contacted Jim Gilchrist and suggested that we work together. I'm very pleased with our joint effort. The Minutemen are simply unarmed observers at the border who report to the Border Patrol what they see. They are not "vigilantes" as Mr. Bush derisively claimed. Their very presence at the border has reduced crossings to almost none in areas where they have set up their observation posts. Jim and I then coauthored the book Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders.

TNA: What have you concluded about the current administration's attitude regarding the border with Mexico?

Corsi: It became perfectly obvious to me that the Bush administration has no intention of securing the border. Instead, its leaders are planning to erase it. Government officials, right up to and including President Bush, are implementing plans to create one political entity out of the three nations of North America: Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In addition to a great many other harmful consequences, this would mean there will be no borders, and anyone will be able to move from one of the three countries to another at will.

TNA: What brought you to such a frightening conclusion?

Corsi: I discovered the formal launching of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a March 2005 agreement entered into by President Bush, Mexico's President Fox, and Canada's Prime Minister Martin. Anyone can verify the reality of this agreement by going to spp.gov on the Internet. It will confirm the SPP's existence even though the website is designed to deny the ultimate goal. It's quite clear that the SPP calls for open borders and an eventual political union of the three nations. Exactly a year after the SPP's birth, Mr. Bush, President Fox, and the new Canadian Prime Minister Harper met again in Cancun, Mexico, under the auspices of the SPP to continue implementation of this sovereignty-compromising proposal.

TNA: What, if anything, have these plans to do with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)?

Corsi: When the SPP was launched in 2005, its creators acknowledged that NAFTA hadn't accomplished all of the goals expected of it. So they created SPP, sometimes referred to by opponents of this scheme as "NAFTA Plus." The White House then established SPP working groups housed in the NAFTA office at the Department of Commerce.

TNA: Are you suggesting that all of NAFTA's expectations were unrealized?

Corsi: No, not at all, because some of them were realized. For instance, under its Chapter 11, NAFTA established a judicial tribunal whose rulings have already superseded national, state, and local jurisdictions.

Unless the plans culminating in a North American Union are derailed, this NAFTA precedent will be applied to similar tribunals in the planned NAU.

TNA: Didn't NAFTA cost thousands of Americans their jobs?

Corsi: Yes, many firms closed down operations in the United States and moved their plants to Mexico. But these same profit-driven firms have now gone to China where slave labor is widely available and less expensive. The next move in the planned overall merger of the three nations is to have goods shipped from Asia (mostly from China) into Mexican ports such as Lazaro Cardenas on Mexico's west coast. The goods would then be sent by rail and truck to the U.S. border and into our nation and Canada. This arrangement will bypass the expense of using ports at Long Beach and Los Angeles, California, where the costs of employing U.S. longshoremen and American trucking firms are much higher.

TNA: Is the plan to use Mexican ports why the NAFTA Superhighway will be constructed?

Corsi: Precisely. Plans are already drawn to build this new road, four football fields wide, through the heart of our country from Laredo, Texas, to the Canadian border.

TNA: Does this plan to merge our three nations even include a new currency?

Corsi: Yes, Robert Pastor has also called for the creation of the "Amero" that would replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso. This follows in virtual lock step with what the European Union has accomplished for the once-totally independent nations across the Atlantic. Most of them have discarded their own currencies in favor of the Euro. And we know that Mexico's Vicente Fox has openly stated that he wants to duplicate for the Western Hemisphere what the European Union has done in Europe.

TNA: So you see a parallel between the European Union and what is planned for our hemisphere?

Corsi: Yes indeed. The EU was foisted on the people of Europe incrementally with promises of greater trade and no loss of independence. The ultimate plans for a North American Union and beyond are similarly below the public's radar screen. This enables the scheme's promoters to deny their intentions. Our nation is being treated like the frog who was placed in appealingly low-temperature water before the heat got turned up and he was cooked.

TNA: When President Bush addressed the nation via television on May 15, 2006, he pledged to undertake numerous steps to secure the border. What did you think of the speech?

Corsi: I hate to say this but I concluded that the speech was nothing more than public relations posturing and window dressing. In a bit of a panic after the speech, Mexico's President Fox called President Bush and was speedily reassured that placing some National Guard troops on the border was only a temporary measure until the public forgets about the situation.

TNA: What then do you recommend to put a stop to this?

Corsi: The American people have to be alerted, and they have to contact their members of Congress to put a stop to this. The congressmen and senators are largely unaware of what I have described. And I am quite certain that an aroused and deeply concerned electorate would have little trouble in gaining support to block what is planned and to retain our nation's hard-won independence.