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One way to understand the
breadth and depth of progress towards the North American
Union is to look at the Working Groups.
Working Groups are committees
of 'stakeholders' and government representatives.
Stakeholders are representatives of business, government, special
interest groups, and citizens with expertise in the target
area - but they are all connected insiders to the agenda.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - Office of
Global Affairs
The six
Workgroups (1-6 below) that were initiated under
the La Paz Agreement are (1) water, (2) air, (3)
hazardous and solid waste, (4) pollution
prevention, (5) contingency planning and emergency
response, and (6) cooperative enforcement and
compliance. Recognizing that the environment needs
to be considered from a comprehensive perspective,
Border XXI integrates three new Workgroups. These
are (7) environmental information resources, (8)
natural resources, and (9) environmental health.
The Environmental
Health Workgroup (EHWG) is lead by health and
environmental officials on both sides of the
border. For the U.S., Richard Walling, serves as
the "health" Co-Chair, and Ginny Gidi is the
senior staff member and point of contact for the
project within the office. Hal Zenick, Associate
Director for Health of the National Health and
Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the
Environmental Protection Agency serves as the
"environment" Co-Chair. Carlos Santos-Burgoa,
Director General of Environmental Health from the
Mexican Secretariat of Health, is the designated
Co-Chair for Mexico.
The
Environmental Health Workgroup seeks to increase
binational collaboration between environmental and
public health entities to improve the health of
border communities. These collaborative
efforts should improve the workgroup's ability to
identify and address the environmental conditions
that pose the highest health risks. The goal of
the workgroup is to address environmental health
concerns in order to reduce exposures and other
factors associated with the increase in disease
rates along the border.
National Security Working Groups
Efforts are under
way on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to
reform the national security relationship between
the two nations in response to increased terrorism
fears.
Experts agree on
two points: the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 signaled
a reappraisal of U.S. and Mexican security
relations, and the pace of the change is painfully
slow and endangered by political sensitivities.
Seeking to
protect the interests of both nations, the
Department of Homeland Security and its
approximate Mexican counterpart, the Investigation
and National Security Center (CISEN), formed six
working groups in January 2003 to analyze
protection of critical infrastructure along their
2,000-mile shared border.
The six groups
are divided into sectors: health, energy, water,
telecommunications, agriculture and
transportation. The goal is to create an inventory
of vulnerable systems and prioritize them in terms
of risk, according to Mexican and American
officials in Washington. The six groups’ steering
committee has met on four occasions, the last one
in Mexico City in February, a senior Mexican
embassy official told National Defense.
CDC
In 1983, the federal
governments of the United States and Mexico signed
the La Paz Agreement for the protection,
improvement, and conservation of the environment
on the U.S.-Mexico border. The border region was
defined as the area within 62 miles (100 Km) on
either side of the geographic border separating
the two countries. Nine years later, environmental
authorities of both countries released the
Integrated
Border Environmental Plan (IBEP), which
involved six workgroups including: Air, Water,
Hazardous and Solid Wastes, Pollution Prevention,
Contingency Planning and Emergency Response, and
Enforcement.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
BORSTAR Program History
The U.S.
Border Patrol has launched specialized
efforts to save the lives of agents,
undocumented aliens, and the public
since the mid-1980s. The Border Patrol's
first rescue and response teams were
developed during this time in the Yuma,
Tucson, and El Paso Border Patrol
Sectors. At that time, there was no
formal academy for providing rescue
training within the Border Patrol. Since
then, the concept of the Border Patrol's
rescue teams has been revised and
expanded.
BORSTAR Expansion - Binational Cooperation
An
agreement to expand BORSTAR along the
southwest border was one of the
agreements reached during a series of
meetings between the United States and
Mexico regarding
binational efforts to promote border
safety. BORSTAR Teams began providing
binational training to Mexican officers
in the year 2000. In 2001, team members
shared basic skills and knowledge with
more than 400 Mexican law enforcement
officials. Binational training addressed
basic search and rescue, first aid, land
navigation, basic technical rescue, and
aquatic safety techniques.
Binational training to enhance public
safety near the border has already
produced dramatic results: In the last
year, 1,200 people were rescued.
BORSTAR Teams are now in place in each
of the nine southwest border sectors.
BORSTAR is an integral part of making
the border safer. The expansion and
increased resources devoted to BORSTAR
continue to illustrate the Border
Patrol's commitment to safety and the
preservation of human lives.
State Department
U.S. -Mexico
Migration Talks And Plan of Action for Cooperation
on Border Safety
Presidents Vicente Fox and George W.
Bush, in the "Guanajuato Proposal"
issued following their meeting in
February, characterized migration as one
of the major ties that bind Mexico and
the United States.
Accordingly, our respective policies
should work to create a process of
orderly migration that guarantees humane
treatment of migrants, provides
protection of their legal rights,
ensures acceptable work conditions for
migrants and also recognizes the
right of nations to control the flow of
people across their borders....
The
initial meeting of the High Level
Working Group on Migration
occurred in Washington, DC on April 4.
The two sides began talks aimed at
achieving the goal of safe, legal,
orderly and humane migration as set
forth by our Presidents in Guanajuato.
The binational agenda includes
discussion of border safety, the H-2
temporary worker visa program, ideas on
regularization of undocumented Mexicans
in the United States, alternatives for
possible new temporary worker programs,
and efforts on regional economic
development....
A binational working group met June 6 in
San Antonio, Texas, to address border
cooperation and safety. A second
meeting took place on June 8 in
Washington to continue our discussions
of all migration-related issues on the
binational agenda and to establish a
timeframe for future action. As a result
of these meetings, we agreed to increase
immediately existing efforts to ensure
safety on the border and to review our
respective border policies in order to
develop ways to accomplish our common
goal of reducing risks and eliminating
deaths of migrants along the border.
These unprecedented cooperative
efforts will be guided by a plan of
action whose progress and implementation
will be subject to regular review and
evaluation. We have instructed our
respective border authorities to
implement immediately the following
actions:
- Strengthen public safety
campaigns to alert potential
migrants of the dangers of
crossing the border in
high-risk areas;
- Reinforce operational
plans for the protection,
search and rescue of migrants
along the border, including
the increased aerial
surveillance of desert areas
on the U.S. side and increased
presence of Grupo Beta
elements on the Mexican side;
- Implement a cooperative,
comprehensive and aggressive
plan to combat and dismantle
human smuggling and
trafficking organizations; and
-
Initiate a pilot-program on
use of non-lethal weapons by
Border Patrol agents.
Homeland Security
The Governments of the United States and Mexico
have worked actively since the last BNC to
perfect, modernize and expand its many mechanisms
devoted to creating a border region that ought to
be modern, safe, and efficient. As part of this
effort and recognizing the new realities facing
both our countries, our Governments decided to
rename the
BNC Working Group devoted to the border as the
Working Group on Homeland Security and Border
Cooperation. This group's broader portfolio
underscores our mutual resolve to create a border
that embraces technology and enhances bilateral
cooperation to ensure a humane and efficient
management of the border that joins our peoples
and our economies. Our two governments recognize
that we must facilitate the increasing flow of
trade between our two nations and the legal
movement of persons while assuring the security of
our societies. The Mexican Foreign Ministry and
Ministry of Governance and the U.S. Departments of
State and Homeland Security co-chair this new
working group.
EPA - Border 2012 -
Framework See working groups listed in the
Framework pdf
EPA
News - Check out the binational projects
Border 2012 is
a 10-year, binational, results-oriented
environmental program for the U.S.-Mexico border
region. The Border 2012 Program is the latest
multi-year, binational planning effort to be
implemented under the La Paz Agreement and
succeeds Border XXI, a five-year program that
ended in 2000.
Trilateral Committee for Wildlife and
Ecosystem Conservation and Management
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