Different Views of the Fence

Asked this past week about easing US-Canadian border restrictions, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said words to the effect of "There's a line there: get used to it!"

To those who grew up in the 1950's mythology of the World's Longest Undefended Border, this may come as a shock. To those who bought the 1994 NAFTA mantra of the World's Largest Free Trade Zone, it is a sobering reminder that Security Trumps Trade.

And to those who look on North America as a whole, it highlights the fact that the greatest barriers to understanding may be within countries, not between them.

Talking about borders to Americans living in the southern one-third of the US is like saying "mattress" to Mr. Latham in the Monty Python skit. The Furniture Store Manager would respond by pulling a paper bag over his head and standing in a tea chest.

Inhabitants of southern border states see "border" as a funnel for illegal immigrants escaping squalor for jobs in which they can underbid US citizens. Border security for these Americans has less to do with halfing terrorism than trafficking in cheap labour.

Secretary Napolitano was formerly Governor of the State of Arizona whose desert is a shunting yard for this underground railroad. She sees no reason why the approach to a northern border should be any different. A border is a border is a border.

Yet those who live in Burlington, Vermont, in Blaine, Washington and in Sweetgrass, Montana, have a different view. They are used to cross-border shoppers and tourists, to families visiting back and forth, and to opportunists filling up the tanks where the price is right. A nuisance, perhaps, if the traffic jams become to long. A security threat, no.

A lament for the vanishing Friendly Northern Border, overwhelmed by fears post-911, can be read into a refrain by the late Kate Wolfe, California singer songwriter who sang in both countries:

It's gone away, in yesterday
And I found myself on the mountain side
Where the rivers change direction
Across the great divide.