How Did the U.S.-Mexico Border Become Such a Flashpoint?

be crossed. Name a problem that America faces today, economic, social, moral, and somebody somewhere will blame the border for at least part of it. This winding, raggedy, roughly two thousand mile boundary that's about thirty kilometers has become as much about symbolism as sovereignty. It delineates where two nations start and stop, certainly,

and what happens there at least partially defines both. We spoke with Benjamin Johnson, a border expert and history professor at Oola University, Chicago and the co author of Bridging National Borders in North America. He said, in some ways, I think actually people pay too much attention to the border. I think that a lot of the things that are quote unquote problems on the border are manifestations of larger problems that didn't start on the border and aren't going

to be fixed on the border. The US Mexico border as we know it today has been around only since the mid eighteen hundreds, mapped out after the US annexed Texas and won the ensuing Mexican American War of eighteen forty six to eighteen forty eight. The area, of course, was contested long before that, with Native Americans including Aztecs, Manchees, and Apaches, Spanish and Mexicans all laying claim to the

borderlands at one time or another. Today, the border runs from the Pacific Ocean to the e Gulf of Mexico, making up the southern edges of California and Arizona, part of New Mexico, and the entire southern side of Texas. It follows the Rio Grand River in Mexico called the Rio Bravo del Norte, from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. The biggest cities along the way are San Diego, California, Nogalis, Arizona,

and El Paso, Texas. Those are the spots that many think of when they think border crowded crossings with fences and checkpoints manned by police and immigration officials. Most commercial traffic and legal immigration takes place there, but the border has a total of forty eight places where people can

legally cross. Outside of those forty eight are hundreds and hundreds of miles that are largely unmanned by law enforcement, often marked only by low fences, easily crossed on foot if you can make it through the desert and terrain. We also spoke with Ieva de j a professor of anthropology and social studies at Harvard an author of Threshold Emergency Responders on the US Mexico border. They put it this way, It's really a patchwork of business and emptiness,

chaos and order. The US Mexico border, especially in the bigger cities, is a living, thriving ecosystem unto its health. Millions live in work in the immediate area, along with thousands of border agents and immigration officers, are restaurant and retail workers, doctors, lawyers, educators, you name it. Janiette said. The people who live near the border live there often because of the border, either because they have family on both sides and it's easier for them to be part

of that family, or because the border creates opportunities. Some in the US will go to doctors in Mexico, while some who live in Mexico will send their kids to American schools by nationals, often moved between the two countries, sometimes daily, often during long waits to cross the border. Then there are those whose families have been there for decades, whose ancestors can be traced to a time well before the US existed. Junette said. For those people, it's the

border that has crossed them. Their communities were split in half by the border and the fence. According to US Customs and Border Protection, some fifty thousand immigrants crossed the southern border in May, some illegally, some who turned them elves in It was the third straight month of fifty thou plus immigrants. Authorities expect many others slipped through undetected. If you listen to some politicians and pundits, these illegal immigrants are the genesis of any number of problems at

the US faces. They occupy American jobs, don't pay taxes and take government handouts. They smuggle drugs, crowd schools, commit heinous crimes. President Donald Trump says they infest our country. Others claim that immigrants and undocumented workers boost wages, grow the economy, commit crimes at a lower rate than the

public as a whole, and enrich the American culture. D juniet said the communities that live by the border, both Republicans and Democrats, Americans and Mexicans, they see this issue much more reasonably. It's part of their everyday life, and they know that this has nothing to do with security.

For instance, American towns like El Paso are just across the border from Mexican towns like Seu Ladoires, which has one of the highest homicide rates in Mexico, but El Paso is one of the safest communities in the US. Juniette said, no crime is pouring through the border. Only those people that live in the region understand that. Trump, of course, trumpets a zero tolerance policy toward a legal immigration. He declared it a crisis earlier this year and ordered

in the National Guard to protect the border. He promised famously to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. All of this, Johnson says, miss is the point. He said, as a historian, there seems to be a widespread assumption that we used to be in control of the border, and at some point we lost that. And if we hire more people or use certain technology like drones or sensors, or build offense, that we're going to get that back.

That's just not the case. I don't know a single point in history when the government actually determined who and what got to cross and was successful in implementing that vision. This is not about the border. This is about these other things, and we just see them at the border. All those other things economic disparity, racism, nationalism, fear, anger, and crime, just to name a few, that seem amplified at the border, do exist in other places too, from

Chicago to Washington, d C. To Seattle. Janiette said, the border became this site, an object, a metaphor, even where we misplaced very real economic insecurities and social anxieties. So it is the wrong answer to very important questions about the conditions of our society. Still, the US Mexico border, thanks two decisions made in Washington, d C. And elsewhere, remains a flash point. At least away from the border,

Passions run high, rhetoric runs wild. Johnson said it hasn't always been this way and it won't always be this way. Decades from now, when a quarter of the United States is of Latino descent, I think we're going to have a different politics and a different society. I think we're at the high point of a kind of sound and fury on this. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other current topics, visit our home planet, how

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