Issues in the Case:
1. People as Drivers of Regional Economic Integration:
Not only trade and investment - the movement of goods and money - drives regional integration. The case starts out discussing how flows of people also bring about de facto regional integration even in a zone such as North America which is "governed" by an agreement (NAFTA) which purposefully rejects a broader social or political project.

2. NAFTA's "Bottom-Up Model" as its Consequences for Policy:
Because NAFTA lacks mechanisms for government coordination on social issues such as migration, flows of people across the internal borders of the region have been driven by the laws of supply and demand - the vast supply of low-skill Mexican workers and the considerable supply of highly-skilled Canadian workers meeting the demand of the U.S. labor market. 

The authors argue that undocumented migration has ballooned since the 1990s because both supply and demand have outstripped the legal channels to manage these flows.  Thus, NAFTA's market-based model can be viewed as both a success - markets self-regulating for the benefit of all three parties without the intervention of goverment - and a failure - creating incentives for vast illegality and compromising security. 

3. Reconciling Security and Free Trade:
After 9/11, all three NAFTA partners recognized the need to increase cooperation on border management in order to keep NAFTA functioning as a free trade agreement.  This has, in part, motivated the three North American heads of state to endorse the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP, established 2005). 

But this consensus is not enough, according to the authors, who note tha there needs to be agreement on strategy as well as tactics.  This agreement on strategy, in turn, may require the formation of a North American Information Space - and this requires consensus about the limits to civil liberties protections and privacy guarantees in the interest of security.  Students should be encouraged to explore all of the trade-offs, and to consider the Information Space proposal in light of other similar proposals such as Stephen Flynn's concept of Global Megaports for preclearance (see Bibliography below), and the formulation of a European approach to migration (see Bibliography below).

4. "You Get What You Pay For": At What Price Border Control?
The authors recognize that we are not likely to see the kind of institutionalized response to the migration issue in North American that is possible in the European Union context.  At the same time, they repeat that part and parcel of bilateral cooperation on border control and migration management is a commitment to investment in infrastructure and technology.

Further, they contend that asymmetries in the region require that the U.S. (and, to some extent, Canada) be willing to subsidize the poorest member of the trio to bring its practices in line with the needs of the region. At the same time, as we enter a recession in the U.S., the question of who will pay for these measure becomes more and more politically charged.  Students should be asked about the cost/benefit dimensions of the kind of cooperation suggested by the authors, and the short term/long term dimension as well.