The US border fence: and the Americans stuck on the “wrong” side

I think this post is making way too much of this. Disconnected pieces of territories and cul-de-sacs and similar historical anomalies are not unusual with territorial borders, and used to be quite common. There is a similar example with the US-Canadian border, in Minnesota, though I don’t think anyone actually lives in the cul-de-sac. You have to draw the line somewhere.

In this instance, the US could pay the people involved to move, just cede the territory to Mexico (its pretty useless from the US government perspective), or everyone could just put up with the situation. The latter is the normal solution.

Also, the international frontier (the limits to what the state claims as its sovereign territory), the customs frontier, and the immigration control frontier don’t have to coincide, and in fact they usually don’t. Special administrations for frontier zones also happen to be at least not ununsual throughout history.

There is a similar example with the US-Canadian border, in Minnesota, though I don’t think anyone actually lives in the cul-de-sac

if nobody lives there and there isn’t anti-immigrant fence, it isn’t a very similar example, is it?

There are some people who live in that pocket. There was a brief controversy over a feigned independence movement.

Hang on. Is there *actually* a place in Minnesota where there’s both a road and no formal US/Can border? If so, why isn’t anyone already running truckloads of weed across it?

For some reason it is less well known than the Northwest Angle, but here is a peninsula extending southward into northern Puget Sound, the tip of which is south of the 49th parallel, and thus US territory. It’s called Point Roberts. The people who live there (1300 of them according to Wikipedia) have to drive through Canada to get anywhere else in the US.

(I have never been there myself. I am told that in the summer, Canadians go there in order to sin.)

That pitiful enclave, or one a lot like it, was featured in Rory Kennedy’s documentary The Fence / La Barba. It’s recommended watching, if you want to see how an utter failure of concept can lead to a project being scary and pathetic at the same time.

The Northwest Angle and Point Roberts are irrelevant comparisons since although the land-only route would involve crossing an international border and thus dealing directly with a border crossing, the water route is completely within the US and results in no border crossing. The “Disconnected pieces of territories and cul-de-sacs and similar historical anomalies” that Ed alludes to are irrelevant comparisons because they all involve a different country on the other side of each border.

The point that many seem to be missing is that BOTH SIDES of that fence are in the United States, but you can’t get there from here. This fence is an INTERNAL barrier.

“Is it an enclave or an exclave?

Good point. It’s an exclave of the US, and an enclave of Mexico, so long as an infinitesimally thin layer of Mexico adheres to the southern face of the wall, like shrink-wrap.

Ooh! Ooh! I just realized that it could be both an enclave and an exclave if we simply enforce that anyone declare when passing the checkpoint that he or she intends to enter the US [Mexico], and thenceforth will only hear English [Spanish] and only see cowboy shirts [serapes]. Send up the China-signal!

“The point that many seem to be missing is that BOTH SIDES of that fence are in the United States, but you can’t get there from here. This fence is an INTERNAL barrier.”

“Internal barriers” are hardly unique, either. Four blocks from my house is an entire private community enclosed by a (government-built) wall. There’s any number of checkpoints, barriers, enclosures, bases, and physical restraints to travel.

IMHO, the problem with the border wall isn’t the isolation of a handful of american citizens. It’s the unilateral decision to wall off another country. These other issues are just searching for a reason to make this a problem fer Real Merkins, not damn furriners most americans barely acknowledge exist, let alone care about. I get the desire for that, but it really isn’t.

@1: the international frontier (the limits to what the state claims as its sovereign territory), the customs frontier, and the immigration control frontier don’t have to coincide, and in fact they usually don’t.

Historically (let’s say through the 19th cent. e.g. in some European cases), these frontiers probably often did not coincide. But the divergences, while some still exist, are probably less noticeable today. Of course countries can claim their territorial waters extend in an Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 miles offshore, iirc, so in that sense, yes, the “international frontier” and the “customs frontier” do not coincide, since no one goes through customs 200 miles out in the ocean. But taken in this sense, the point about the non-coincidence of the int’l frontier and the customs frontier is somewhat trivial.

I seem to recall that British and French authorities in Dover and Calais have had a joint immigration control arrangement, giving the British power to make arrests in Calais and vice-versa (French in Dover). Perhaps I’ve gotten the details a little off but I think that was the gist. (A main target of the scheme being N. Africans trying to get into Britain from France.) AFAIK the U.S. and Mexico do not have an analogous set-up but I could be wrong. One would think (and one might be right) that fences don’t work, esp. along a border the length of U.S.-Mexico. However, fences’ popularity with govts worldwide is increasing.

On the divergence between the international and the immigration control frontier, in the U.S., Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) claims authorization to make immigration checks (perhaps customs, too, though I don’t know) anywhere w/in 100 miles of a U.S. border. (I’m not sure if the authority is authorized by statute or regulation, though I’d guess the latter.) A majority of the U.S. population lives w/in 100 miles of one border or another, so this is pretty significant. In the other direction, U.S. immigration officials now often do screening in Canadian airports, for flights going to U.S. airports where there are not normal passport control facilities.

(While in San Diego to attend the most recent APA Pacific Division meeting my wife and I rented a car and drove around. As I expected we’d go near, though not into Mexico, I made sure she took her green card. Sure enough, on a highway about 15 miles from the border- one that didn’t cross it- an immigration checkpoint was set up. In the end she didn’t have to show her documents, but I was glad she would have been able to if needed.)

I am told that in the summer, Canadians go there in order to sin.

Or buy gasoline. The maildrop business, definitely: it’s an easy way for Vancouverites to send and receive US mail cheaply and use online shopping services that are off limits to Canadian addresses.

The border situation in the US is complicated by the rights granted to Native Americans. The northern border is covered by the 1794 Jay Treaty, the southern border by other treaties and long-standing agreements. They might seem antiquated relics, but the people affected by them take those rights seriously.

“I brought up Point Roberts because it always strikes me as peculiar that it is less well-known than the Northwest Angle. Any example involving the Canadian border is a useful contrast. I had no intention to defend the border fence, nor do I see anybody else here defending it.”

For what it’s worth, I knew about Point Roberts, but I had never heard about the Northwest Angle before I read this comments thread. And the differences between the US-Canadian and the US-Mexican borders are not at all surprising, considering the differences in wealth between the two countries in question. It’s not an American exceptionalism either. I can assure you that the border regimes between Norway and Sweden, Finland and Russia, are quite different. Border fences are found in Europe as well.

US Customs and Immigration maintain posts at certain airports in other countries. I know Toronto and Shannon, and I think there are a few more. You can go through Customs and Immigration and be for legal purposes in the US while physically being (in the case of Shannon) thousands of miles away in Ireland.

Of course in any international airport there is a zone that you go through that is physically in that country, but before you have been legally admitted. In some cases they might refuse to let you in and then you are stuck in that little zone.

Somebody should make a boring and fake-humanistic movie about that! With that guy who used to be a little bit funny! Doing a zany accent!

The first ever fatal submarine attack in military conflict was by the Glorious Confederacy to sink Union ships in port during the War Of Northern Aggression, so I’m assuming there’s a folk memory in US naval history that you can’t be too careful.

The first ever fatal submarine attack in military conflict was by the Glorious Confederacy to sink Union ships in port during the War Of Northern Aggression, so I’m assuming there’s a folk memory in US naval history that you can’t be too careful.

I doubt anyone on the North American continent actually knows this save for really really keen military buffs.

Gunboats on the Great Lakes. Anti-terrorist gunboats, I guess. That is mind-boggling. I want to know more.

Original press sources seem to have 404’d unusually quickly, but here’s TNH on the case, with an extended quote from a London, ON paper. The “operational readiness” spin from USCG is not very reassuring, especially when the “safety zones” are all in US waters.

If a child of Mexican parents is born in the US region on the wrong side of the fence, are they still an American? At the moment the law clearly says yes. I fear that the next step is to erode that – Birthirsm for the masses – so that someone is not an American national unless they have an American parent. Then the fence moves into institutions rather than being a physical fence.