CAFTA = Open Borders?

Source: Team Tancredo

Tom Tancredo updates us on the steaming pile of happy that is CAFTA...

Buried among its nearly 1,000 pages, the agreement contains an expansive definition of “cross-border trade in services.” This definition would effectively give people from Central American nations a de facto right to work in the United States. In fact, CAFTA is more than a just trade agreement about sugar and bananas; it is a thinly disguised immigration accord.

Little effort is even made by the U.S. trade officials to hide their efforts. One article of the agreement reads, “Cross-border trade in services or cross-border supply of services means the supply of a service ... by a national of a party in the territory of another party.” CAFTA also stipulates that member nations take care to ensure that local and national measures “relating to qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing requirements do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services,” and the U.S. is required to guarantee that our domestic laws are, “not in themselves a restriction on the supply of the service.”

U.S. immigration limits, visa requirements – or even licensing requirements and zoning rules – could be considered ‘unnecessary barriers to trade’ that act as ‘restrictions on the supply of a service.’ Congress would then be forced to change our immigration laws, or face international trade sanctions.

If CAFTA and its successors were really just about trade, the agreements would be little more than a few pages long, setting a schedule for opening markets and phasing out unfair taxes on goods. But they aren’t. In reality, these agreements have become vehicles to expand a growing body of international law that threatens to supersede our own national sovereignty.

H/T VFR who reports that all that the only thing standing between us and this further erosion of national sovereignty is Costa Rica who has yet to approve this Faustian bargain.

Have no fear though, Hannitized assures us that "Globalization" is the best thing since sliced prunes. Mmmm, sliced prunes!

Some earlier thoughts on globaloney...here.

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