Ingolf Vogeler, Types of
International Borders
along the U.S.-Mexico Border
Conclusion: “Security” Landscapes of Exclusion
The United
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12,
says “Everyone shall be
free to leave any country, including his [sic] own,” but it does not
assure the right of people to enter another country! Only the rights of
individuals within existing nation-states are recognized but not the
universal human right of the free movement of people regardless of
national borders. Hence, “evil” governments, such as the Soviet Union
and its Eastern European allies, Cuba, and North Korea, were/are shamed by
this declaration, but all countries that keep people out are acting
legally, and if not morally!
In addition, international laws do not prohibit using propaganda and
financial incentives to "lure" people to leave their own countries, as the
West German governments did with Germans in “Communist” East Germany;
the Israeli governments did with Jews in “Communist” Soviet Union; and
the USA governments has done with people from “Communist” Cuba.
In the final analysis, governments continue to use international borders
to exclude “other” people and activities that they deem undesirable,
regardless of the international and United Nations treaties that they
signed. Ironically, governments justify their restrictive immigrant and
asylum policies all the while promoting financial and manufacturing
globalization.
For the most part,
international borders continue to be important and enforced, although
some of them are “soft” and “hard.” But regardless, borders separate and
exclude “outsiders,” forcing spatial differentiation between places and
people, who are often even related to each other.
International borders are, thus, fundamentally security landscapes of
exclusion.