I’m an advocate of open borders. I’d like to see gates and walls come down and any plan to maintain and build structures along the US Mexico border cease. This is, of course, a position of hypothesis that asks: what would happen if border gates, walls, and barriers were removed? And why would a particular a set of results happen given conditions? I enjoy conjectural tests and simulations.

If A results then what policies and positions would prove correct or incorrect? How would the idea and arguments behind nationalism and protectionism change? Why let oranges and poetry through and not people?

It’s a serious prospect. The United States invests billions in maintaining its borders, as do other countries, billions that could be spent in better, more constructive ways, such as on increasing the imagination of people. We know that walls will not keep people out. But can the arguments for borders ever go beyond vague comparative analysis without flexible spatial change?

Image source: Leftside.

Border walls remove a huge swath of landscape from human vision. They hinder sight, seeing, travel, distance, and the imagination, a wasted canvas. They construct difficult metaphors to overcome in debates about identity, safety, economics, and law.