George W. Bush: 'Canada, Mexico And US Should Merge'

Former President George W. Bush stressed the importance of immigration on Tuesday at a speech in Dallas, throwing himself back in the ring as the debate over reform heats up in Washington. "Immigrants come with new skills and new ideas. They fill a critical part in our labor market. They work hard for a better life," Bush said at the event, hosted by the George W. Bush Institute and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. – Huffington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Immigrants reinvigorate our collective soul.

Free-Market Analysis: Okay, we made up the headline. George W. Bush has never publicly said that Canada, Mexico and the US should merge into one great big North American Union.

But in our view, he might as well have said it.

He spent a good bit of his second term sneaking around and holding confidential meetings with top leaders of Canada and Mexico. The security deals he made more closely combined civil and military policing, from what we can tell.

And today, of course, there is a "constitution free" zone between Canada and the US where authorities can act unimpeded by such pesky restraints as laws designed to protect people from unnecessary search and seizure.

Coincidence? Toward the end of his term, Bush made a desperate effort to further immigration reform in the US but was soundly rebuffed. What was not widely reported was that Bush's public effort was merely the capstone of years of private efforts to apparently move the US, Canada and Mexico toward a closer "cooperation."

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