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The irony of closing the border
Mar. 15th, 2020 10:04 amWe need to close the border. We need to work for a world without borders. These are not contradictory statements.
Canada and Mexico are inching closer to closing the border with the US, and I support this, even though I in general advocate for the free movement of people. The central issue is that a virus doesn't care what passport you hold. Canada's approach is interesting because we're ramping up slowly, and while this works against containing the contagion (a Canadian who is returning home from the US is just as contagious as a US tourist), it does work towards lessening mob scenes at airports or borders, which would be infection vectors. So it's a difficult position to be in but I'm hopeful it will minimize infection.
But at the same time, this crisis has shown how interconnected we are, and how America's insistence on dividing people into more or less worthy of basic human rights has screwed it worse than other countries.
Let's take the toddler concentration camps as an example. ICE has not stopped arresting people. That means that ICE agents go into communities where they don't live (infection point 1), touch people they don't know while arresting them (infection point 2), bring those people to crowded detention centres (infection point 3), touch them some more (infection point 4) then go back to their own communities (infection point 5). We already know that people, including young children, have died from preventable diseases because they were refused medical treatment; what do you think is going to happen when COVID-19 hits the concentration camps? And do you think the virus is gonna be like, "oh, I can't leap onto that guard! He's an American citizen!"
We need to be self-isolating now but in a broader sense we need to be providing care and connection for everyone.
Canada and Mexico are inching closer to closing the border with the US, and I support this, even though I in general advocate for the free movement of people. The central issue is that a virus doesn't care what passport you hold. Canada's approach is interesting because we're ramping up slowly, and while this works against containing the contagion (a Canadian who is returning home from the US is just as contagious as a US tourist), it does work towards lessening mob scenes at airports or borders, which would be infection vectors. So it's a difficult position to be in but I'm hopeful it will minimize infection.
But at the same time, this crisis has shown how interconnected we are, and how America's insistence on dividing people into more or less worthy of basic human rights has screwed it worse than other countries.
Let's take the toddler concentration camps as an example. ICE has not stopped arresting people. That means that ICE agents go into communities where they don't live (infection point 1), touch people they don't know while arresting them (infection point 2), bring those people to crowded detention centres (infection point 3), touch them some more (infection point 4) then go back to their own communities (infection point 5). We already know that people, including young children, have died from preventable diseases because they were refused medical treatment; what do you think is going to happen when COVID-19 hits the concentration camps? And do you think the virus is gonna be like, "oh, I can't leap onto that guard! He's an American citizen!"
We need to be self-isolating now but in a broader sense we need to be providing care and connection for everyone.
