See Secretary Salazar’s new vision for North America and the Americas titled, ‘A New American Alliance’

A NEW AMERICAN ALLIANCE

THE BORDERLANDS PLATFORM

Secretary and Ambassador Ken Salazar

The Borderlands Platform offers a new vision for North America and the Americas as the United States, Mexico, and Canada strive to achieve greater economic prosperity and shared national security. This vision is an alternative to the path on which we currently find ourselves.

We will fulfill our mission when the leaders of the United States, Mexico, and Canada call for the creation of a New American Alliance, adopting and promoting the following high-level priorities for the benefit of North America’s 520 million people:

1.       SECURITY.  The United States, Mexico, and Canada must create an enforceable trilateral security treaty that addresses defense, crime, corruption, and violence.

2.       TRADE. The US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement must be renewed and improved for the benefit and protection of workers, businesses, and the environment, and to ensure North America’s global competitiveness.

3.       THE US-MEXICO AND US-CANADA BORDERS. The 2,000-mile-long land border between the United States and Mexico, and 5,500-mile-long land border between the United States and Canada, are broken and must be fixed. Our three nations must have modern and secure borders that can tackle crime, manage migration flows, and promote commerce.

4.       MIGRATION. A new and durable legal framework between the United States, Mexico, and Canada must be established to support labor, education, cultural exchanges, asylum, families, and human rights.

5.       DIVERSITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER. The 70 million Latinos in the United States, including 50 million Mexican Americans, must be recognized as essential to the economic and democratic prosperity of our country. The New American Alliance will embrace the rich diversity of the more than 520 million people of the United States, Mexico, and Canada, seizing diversity as the superpower of the Americas; and it will recognize the importance of our neighbors to the south in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

Ken Salazar’s book, Borderlands: My Fight for An Inclusive America, will serve as a tool to help achieve the goals of the Borderlands Project. Using storytelling and anecdotes from Secretary Salazar’s life, it insists that North America can be a unified economic and democratic powerhouse. Borderlands refers not merely to our national borders, but also to the borders that exist within our respective nations, our communities, and even sometimes ourselves. For too long, the United States has been indifferent and inattentive to the Americas—the New American Alliance will overcome this indifference and set a new standard for relations across the western hemisphere.