USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fear itself: Why closed borders are bad for America and the world

With hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa pouring into Europe and terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Ankara, questions related to borders and border control abound. Are borders—whether around Europe, the United States, or elsewhere—actually as vulnerable and under threat as some politicians insist? Threat perceptions related to terrorism, immigrants, and illicit drugs have been used by some presidential candidates to justify costly proposals for thousands of miles of walls along our Southern and Northern borders. Most recently, those heightened fears have led some leaders to argue against the admission to the United States of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria.

This heated political rhetoric obscures the complexity of the border reality confronted by the United States and its neighbors, which is dominated by the growth of beneficial cross-border trade and travel. The growing intensity of cross-border flows can be traced first and foremost to the spread of peace and the opening of borders across the Americas. Unlike Europe in the face of the Syrian crisis, and unlike Ukraine under threat from Russian-backed militias, the United States does not have to worry about the effects of military conflicts involving its neighbors. Across the hemisphere, countries solve their disputes in international courts rather than on the battlefield.

Link:http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/order-from-chaos/posts/2015/11/20-rethinking-border-security-trinkuna...

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