Ken Salazar, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico under former President Joe Biden, U.S. Senator for Colorado, and Secretary of the Interior under former President Barack Obama, is out with a new book, "Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America."
He joined NTX Now host Ron Corning and managing producer Bekah Morr to discuss how he sees more strength in unity, at a time when it seems the U.S. is defined by division.
These interview highlights have been edited for length and clarity. To hear the conversation in full, click the 'listen' button above.
In your book, you outline a vision for a new North American alliance which would involve Texas. What would that look like in your ideal world?
The new North American alliance is creating much greater unity, uniting our country here internally in the United States, but also the relationship with Canada and Mexico.
Mexico and the United State share a border that's 1,200 miles. So my own view is: we are doing significant things on trade —we're the number one trading partners in the world — but we need to do a lot more. We need to create a modern border. We need a fix our asylum and migration systems.
If we can't do it here in North America, I don't think it can be done anywhere else. So it's an opportunity that's in front of us and something that we got to jump on.
What's holding us back from fixing some of these issues that have been plaguing the United States historically for centuries?
What's happened, especially in the last 30 years, is the broken border and migration issues have become the third rail of American politics, and so Republicans, including this current administration, have seized on the "broken border" as a political opportunity.
We need a much better understanding among the American people and the people of Mexico to fix our challenges for the long term, but to secure our future. That's what I went to Mexico to do and now, in writing my book, I worked very hard on trying to transform the relationship forever.
It was a conversation I used to have with a great Texan by the name of George W. Bush when I arrived in Washington, D.C. My first meeting with him, we actually spent a good amount of time talking about the U.S. and Mexico, fixing the border, fixing immigration, and to his credit, he led the way and we did a lot of things.
In order to fix these problems, we need to transcend the political weaponization of the border and migration, and we need concentrate on solutions. The solutions are hard, but they're very doable. It frankly would take a lot of political courage on the part of the United States and our leaders, and it also would take political courage on the parts of Mexico and Canada.
It feels like we are a long way from solutions. How do we get to a point where progress can be made?
Increasingly, we have become a very divided United States, but it's not just the border migrants. It's red states versus blue states, it's rural versus urban. We have our own borderlands we have to deal with here in our country.
My hope is that there are more of us who really do believe in a united America and celebrating the diversity that makes us such a great nation and creates opportunity for people like my family, and families like yours.
I think the American people are waking up to this reality. We can't go backwards. We can't go back to the days before our civil war, before the civil rights movement. We can not go back where we compartmentalize people and essentially segregate our country again.
If you think about where we've come as a country in this 250th year of our nation, we have come a long way. We have a long way to go. We're not perfect, but we were on the right track.
What would your magic wand solution be to getting us to a place where Americans can put more focus on where we agree and where we are aligned versus where we're different?
The power is in the people. It always has been, and no matter the humongous amount of money that is being spent to buy the elections, and this very true more so than ever before, you can't have billionaires essentially determining the future of this country.
They have a vote just like you and me and the 340 million Americans, I think, are gonna take it back. Because I think there's a lot of concern. I travel a lot. I'm a rancher from the very rural, remote parts of southern Colorado, and I see how people are suffering and are very concerned. Lots of farmers and ranchers are going out of business. That's because of the erratic policies that we have. We need to make sure that we get back on a steady track and right now, our country, our government, our democracy is trembling. So we need to get it back.
Ron Corning is a co-hosts of KERA's NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Ron at rcorning@kera.org.
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