Dear Arizona Congressmen:

It gives me no pleasure to send this letter, but with each passing day since your July 28 vote for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, my sadness for America increases. And you, Congressmen, who swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, betrayed your country in the disgraceful post-midnight, vote-buying debacle that delivered the CAFTA.

In fact CAFTA and NAFTA, as well as the upcoming FTAA, will ultimately make corporations and politicians richer and more powerful, trivialize U.S. citizenship, oppress taxpayers, and make the Constitution and U.S. sovereignty irrelevant.

It’s not as if you didn’t know what the passage of CAFTA would mean for the U.S. The agreement has been widely touted as an extension of NAFTA and we all know what that has brought: drugs, gangs, disease, and a never-ending invasion of illegal job seekers and dependents, not to mention record trade deficits. NAFTA has sucked up more than a million U.S. jobs even as trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have ballooned to a whopping $111 billion.

The ink on the accord was barely dry when Mexico declared bankruptcy and sank into its worst depression in 60 years. The U.S. taxpayers then underwrote a mega-billion dollar bailout! Turning a flood of illegal border-crossers into a tsunami that shows no sign of abating, NAFTA has overwhelmed our Arizona law enforcement, job markets, schools and hospitals.

Dependent on U.S. dollar remittances from Mexicans residing in the U.S., the NAFTA emboldened Mexican government not only encourages illegal border-crossers, it helps them get here and, once here, insists that U.S. policies favor them.

Congressmen — as you well know, Mexico is little more than a narco-state, responsible for 92 percent of the cocaine sold in the U.S. in 2004. Law enforcement officers on both sides of the border are increasingly attacked by paramilitary units, aka “Zetas”, escorting drug shipments into the U.S. and reportedly offering a $50,000 bounty on Border Patrol agents and police officers.

In Nuevo Laredo, the busiest border entry, the U.S. ambassador announced — two days after your vote for the border-opening CAFTA — that he was closing the consulate for security reasons.

CAFTA will exacerbate the problems produced by NAFTA and extend its failures to the poverty-laden counties of Central America and the Dominican Republic. But you know all this Congressmen, just as you know that modern trade agreements are less about trade than about redistributing people, power, and wealth.

CAFTA is not a free trade agreement! It further erodes our Constitutional protections, permitting the override of the law of the land by external trade committees, (appointed — not elected), virtually eliminating our borders, and permitting the free flow of “immigrants” (formally called illegals) from Central American countries. It will further increase the already excessive regulation of business and people by the government as well as the flow of our industrial base and jobs out of the U.S.

Still you voted for CAFTA, and it was approved by a paltry two votes. Many of your colleagues were bought off or blackmailed. Some simply decide to cast their lot with the corporate elite and the international socialists intent on destroying American sovereignty. What is your reason for voting “yes”≠

It is the height of arrogance for those who voted for this mess to think they have a mandate to rewrite the Constitution or do harm to this nation that Americans have fought and died for nearly 2 centuries. The reality is looking more and more like we are currently stuck with two parties in a race to take this nation apart.

It will be difficult, at best, to ever believe you are really against illegal immigration, or that you believe in a truly free market, or that you stand for a strong, independent America. Your CAFTA vote tells us everything we need to know about you.

Senator Karen S. Johnson, District 18