Open Borders and Closing Threats

Abstract

Where do we draw the line on the adage that fences make good The iconic Robert Frost verse is much quoted, but do longer, higher, barbed-wire, electrified, security-patrolled, and access-controlled fences make for still better neighbours? This question embodies the essence of current continuing tensions along the Canadian-US borders. The traditional longest undefended cliche is quickly becoming a 20thcentury artefact with levels of security and proposals for much, much more than would have been conceivable a decade ago, before 11 September 2001. Admittedly, this circumstance would barely be recognized as a constraint, let alone a problem, throughout much of the world in historical or even current terms, crossing a national border is a serious personalpolitical decision. (Try getting a visa to Russia or China if you want a lesson in bureaucratic frustration.) Nevertheless, due to the unique US-Canadian relationship, its recent evolution needs examination.Certainly, from time immemorial until n September 2001, the reality of the North American continent was the virtually free movement of populations - animal and human. Well before there was significant human presence, the fauna drifted (and for that matter the flora as well, albeit more slowly) with no special regard for anything beyond the availability of grass and water, favourable climate, and fewer predators. Much of North America was a sea of grass where the deer and the antelope and a roaming herd of buffalo could take much of a day to pass a given landmark.Nor did anything beyond the nomadic pursuit of wildlife impinge on the travels of most native Americans: they came; they camped, gathered, hunted, and feasted; and they moved again for the next season or hunting opportunity. The Head- Smashed-in-Buffalo- Jump site in Alberta epitomizes such a style of life. While specific tribes were more or less found in general locations, geographic constraints were minimal. And, so far as European arrival on the continent was concerned, the specific location of boundaries was a technical-political concern rather than one of serious socioeconomic significance to individuals. Both Canada and the United States sought people to fill the empty space in the centre of the continent and thereby generate prosperity from farming, ranching, and mining. In that regard, the primary difference in the 19th and early 20th century between a Canadian and a US citizen was between an immigrant who turned right rather than left while traveling west across North America. And that is not to count the present-day Canadians and Americans whose ancestors originated in the other country, moving north or south at will and whim. Primarily, these were people seeking precious metals, better land, more reliable water, closer trailheads, and generally enhanced economic opportunity, rather than viewing they lived as an immutable national label for citizenship.To be sure, there were specific territorial conflicts and persisting unresolved boundary differences; however, for generations the Canadian-US border has been socially and economically fluid, despite clearly surveyed and carefully marked boundary lines. There are endless anecdotes demonstrating a genuine neighbourly spirit more akin to the relations of congenial residents on a city block than those between two nations. Witness, for example: the children of Point Roberts in Washington state, who are bussed to school through British Columbia and get most of their services from Canada; the library and opera house in Derby Line, Vermont, that sit in both the United States and Stanstead, Quebec; the women of Stanstead, Quebec, who had their babies in Vermont when labour came on more quickly than expected, because that's the closest clinic was, and whose children were then dual nationals, having been born in the US; Canusa Avenue, in Beebe Plain, Vermont, which runs east-west and whose northside residents are Canadians while its southside residents are Americans; the children's sports teams across the continent that regularly play opponents from schools in the other country; the thousands of daily workers and shoppers who live in one country and work in the other - and pick up specials on the way home; and the many instances emergency vehicles and volunteer fire departments in one country respond to accidents and fires in the other. …