Border Tales

Since human greed and territorial nature created the idea of a border centuries ago, the world has become increasingly defined by borders and the policies that surround them. As natural borders—such as rivers—drastically change environments, artificial borders—such as the US-Mexico border—drastically change human existence. A look at the border policy of the most powerful nation in the world is a good exercise to connect with the vast implications and hypocrisy of border and immigration policy.

When the white man arrived in America, we (I am a white man) encountered the native population, who believed that like the air and the water, land was not something that could be owned. Exploiting this belief, we swept away cultures and civilizations from coast to coast, and then drew lines on the land to signify what was ours. As we defined ourselves to be a beacon of hope, the masses arrived, and increasingly, we have looked to those lines on the land to keep them away.

Our southern border, which was once abstract, has come to separate one of the wealthiest nations from one of the poorest nations in the world. Before the border existed, the man two feet north was no better than the man two feet south, but today, that difference of four feet might be the difference between wealth and poverty, food and starvation, hope and desperation. All because of a line and our laws to define its significance.

The legislative line of order versus liberty is hopefully balanced, but it is more often stumbled over when defining the rules of our border. As immigration into the U.S. increases, citizens sometimes feel that we are losing order and that “our” land should not be “theirs” too. This ideology is often rooted in racism and fear. The notion of protecting “our” land has been given life through much legislation dating back to as early as the Chinese Exclusion Act or as recently as Arizona’s SB1070. Essentially, this type of legislation makes our borders less permeable, and allows us to send more and more immigrants across that line. The irony of this ideology—that has become the centerpiece of US immigration policy—is remarkable.

The U.S. is located on land that we stole through violence in the Mexican American War. The U.S. came to prosperity on the backs of stolen humans from another continent. One of the driving forces of our economy today is the cheap and hardworking undocumented labor force, a product of the line we drew so long ago. But still, despite all this, our policy towards immigrants is self-righteous and overtly seeks to protect “our” land for ourselves.

This hypocrisy expands beyond the line from Tijuana to the Gulf of Mexico. It exists in every border laid out on this earth. Can we truly own land? Can we acquire it fairly? Is the security that we feel from a line in the dirt worth the tremendous divide that it unequivocally creates among humans? The root question is whether borders are justified in their existence.