Democracy requires borders

In the face of a Democratic, media, and public outcry, President Trump last week ended his policy of separating children from adult illegal immigrants claiming asylum. It was his second step toward a sensible border policy. The first had been the initial decision to enforce immigration law and prosecute people sneaking into the country.

It was telling to watch how Democrats and left-wing commentators responded. Having shed tears all week about family separation and traumatized children, Trump's opponents began objecting to any detention of families entering the U.S. illegally. A chorus of critics described the new policy as "handcuffs for all." An MSNBC host portrayed as a dark “totalitarian” act the very idea of a border guard stopping and arresting an illegal immigrant.

Behind these objections is a premise that goes unstated because it is radical and deeply unpopular. It is that border enforcement is itself illegitimate. The notion that we would police who enters our country strikes some as inherently oppressive. Many of our elites, Left and Right, see borders as archaic and arbitrary. This is often related to their doubt about the need for, and morality of, the nation-state.

The unpopularity of this elite ideology has become obvious in elections here and in Europe, where the push to dissolve borders and nations is far more progressed. The ideology is as dangerous as it is unpopular.

Borders are inextricable from self-determination. People are not made to be solitary creatures, or even to live merely in family units. We are political animals, and we have access to our highest potentials only when we live in community with one another. Becoming part of a community is forming an identity not merely as “me,” but also as “us.”