The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

However, the process of entry and eventual citizenship for Canadians is quite regularized. Because the predom- inant U.S. issue involving Mexico is the status of its mil- lions of illegal entrants to the United States, an issue that does not exist on the Canadian side, it is understandable that Canada does not want the United States to think of its southern and northern borders concerning this issue as though they were identical. Moreover, in the age of terrorism, because identifica- tion of individuals posing a security threat to the United States is paramount, the immigration issue becomes even more sensitized. The problem here from the Canadian viewpoint is not that illegal Mexican immigrants possess criminal records. Most do not. They come to the United States for one reason, to work. And they work hard. Rather, the threat for the United States, as Canada sees it, is that in this mass of illegal immigration, a few terror- ists could slip in as well. Given this reality, the United States may adopt a sin- gle stringent approach to screening the flow of immi- gration across all its borders, even though the problem is far less severe to the north than in the south. And if it does, Canada will lose the benefits of cross-border mobility. While admitting differences in the quality of law enforcement north and south of the United States, the American concern is with possible terrorist infiltration in all three countries. In Canada some suspicious groups have raised considerable money to fund their foreign operations, a fact that local law enforcement officers are, of course, well aware of. Yet the rejection by the Canadian public and by members of the country’s elites of the very idea that Canada could be used for such pur- poses makes the American equation of the terrorist threat from the north and from the south far easier to defend. Still, for a border people the U.S. insistence on the use of passports at the 49th parallel has a decidedly retro feel. It is as though American thinking about globalization and about North American economic integration has sudden- ly been reversed. Passports are cumbersome and out of keeping with the electronic age, particularly for a country that, in large part, invented information technology. And with the U.S. instituting new access controls, North America seems to be moving in the opposite direction from the European Union, where the Schengen Agreement has facilitated travel around the continent. Caught Between NAFTA and 9/11 For most of the long interlude of Liberal Party rule since 1945, partially offset by the prairie populism of the Progressive-Conservative governments of John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark, Canada was dead set against “continentalism,” as any form of North American integration was then called. The Canada- U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which eventually led to the North American Free Trade Agreement, was there- fore as close to a “revolution of alliances” as North America has ever come. Surely the psychic impact of the death of anti-conti- nentalism for the border people of Canada was as trau- matic culturally and politically as the British Conquest (1760) was for Quebec, or the end of British colonial tute- lage and the beginning of independence (1867) for Canada as a whole. Reversing many assumptions about the origins of economic growth, association with the United States, the viability of Canadian commercial enter- prises and the capacity to compete internationally, the Mulroney government (1984-1993) charted a bold new course for Canada despite real risks. At its urging, Canadians placed their faith in the strength of the American economy and in their perpetual and undiluted access to it, both in terms of trade and finance. Still a separate country politically and culturally, Canada irrevocably tied its economic future to a faith in the openness and prosperity of the United States. Then came the attacks of Sept. 11. That the shock of 9/11 for the United States in securi- ty terms was gargantuan and lasting is undeniable. But it generated consternation to the north, as well, albeit for somewhat different reasons. Not only was Canada now concerned about its own territorial vulnerability to terror- ist attack, but it began to doubt the heretofore comfort- able assumption that its great neighbor to the south was impregnable. Far worse, for a border people, was the matter of what the United States would decide to do to bolster its own security. Indeed, then-U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Celucci declared “Security trumps trade,” as did other American officials, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y. However valid its underlying argument for stimu- lating action to shore up defenses against terrorism, what did this statement imply for a border people who had put their faith in the perpetual openness of the American border with respect to the movement of Canadian goods, F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47