Mexican President: "Erase the Border"

Last night, while reading The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, I stumbled upon this jaw-dropper on page 266. The authors quote Mexican President Vicente Fox as follows:

"Now we want to go further. I'm talking about a NAFTA plus. A NAFTA that takes us to a further integration. In the long term, what we are looking for is convergence of our two economies. Convergence on the basic fundamental variables of the economy. Convergence on the income of people. Convergence on salaries. Of course this is a ten-, twenty-year program. But when we reach that level, then we can just erase the border, open up the border for free flow of products, merchandise, capital, as well as people."

President Fox correctly notes that it would be impractical to "erase" the U.S.-Mexican border without first melding the two countries' economies. As long as Americans earn more money than Mexicans, the flow of people across the border will be overwhelmingly in a northward direction.

That is why President Fox says that we must have a, "Convergence on the income of people. Convergence on salaries." Evidently, the plan is to raise Mexican salaries and lower American salaries until they meet somewhere in the middle. Then Mexicans will no longer have any compelling reason to come sneaking over the border en masse. We will be just as poor as they are.

It's plain to see how this arrangement would benefit Mexico, at least in the short run. But what do Americans have to gain by going along with such a plan?