On the road...again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

Open Borders

Sorry if the subject matter touches a political nerve, but…  But in the personal view of the Footloose Forester, the subject of open borders vs. secure borders has always been a political talking point that never had enough umph in it to win over most thoughtful people.  Having violated more than one international boundary line himself, the Footloose Forester had and still has a dog in this fight.  He thinks that countries put too much emphasis on some factors and not enough on others.  Make that…some countries put too much emphasis on some things that are related to sovereign boundaries and hardly any emphasis on posting or maintaining international demarcation lines in other places.  Maybe it is a matter or cost, but certainly it is also a matter of political policy.

Getting down to cases, if one drives north from NE Hungary into Slovakia along Highway 67-E58, you will not see any road signs that indicate you are leaving Hungary, or any when you pass into Slovakia.  Perhaps that is because neither country emphasizes border security along some roads.  The open country, sometimes called steppes, is just too easy to transgress with or without roads.  Protecting the borders from easy entry would be costly but ultimately unlikely to accomplish anything in regard to protection.  And maybe both Hungary and Slovakia don’t have border disputes that require a policy of diligent protectionism.   An open border is also the case when one continues along the same major highway from Slovakia into Poland.  There are no checkpoints, no gates, no uniformed border or customs agents in waiting.  The pertinent authorities and geographers know where the border lines are, but it seems that the administration of border lands, in these cases, has more to do with taxing authority and policies of each sovereign state, and less to do with the potential consequences for incursions.  As proximate neighbors with similar economic profiles, the competitiveness can be settled with trade agreements, and probably has been. 

Poland may have a similar view since a major highway between Poland and Czechia (the Czech Republic) also reveals no signs of a border control apparatus.  In other words, the borders are open. 

But wait; the European Union has recognized the military threat posed by Russia and continues to build a long border wall along the eastern borders of many of its charter countries. 

The European Union is building a long border wall

One huge factor in easing access to markets and trade in Europe has been the inclusion of many countries into the European Union, which includes the introduction of the Euro as legal currency in most of them.  Of the 27 countries in the European Union, not all of them have yet recognized the Euro as an official currency but acknowledge de facto use of the Euro in many places.

Slovakia and Poland are members of the European Union and both recognize the Euro in day-to-day transactions, although Euro use in Poland is still de facto.    Free migration and easing of border restrictions may have been part of the terms of reference in the creation of the European Union, and the cross-border use of Euros is expanding.  On the bucket-list tour of Eastern Europe, the Footloose Forester noted that Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria also dealt in Euros, along with their own national currency, whether as official currency, or de facto.

The issue of borders and border crossings has always held the unexpected.  Looking back a few years, the Footloose Forester recalls crossing a road border from Switzerland into Austria without even stopping at the line of demarcation.  Oh, there was a manned border station with red-white painted gates that could be lowered when necessary, but at that time we only slowed down and did not stop.  Collecting customs duties and such were probably relegated to more frequented locales.  Customs and immigration issues and their infrastructural networks are costly to establish and maintain, which perhaps is why so many countries do not invest heavily in them.  The politics of border control in Europe appears not to be as important an issue as it is in North America.  The grand matter is more properly termed geopolitics.

The oft-repeated expression, “if you don’t have secure borders, you don’t have a country” is a political one-liner that generates a lot of heat, but not much light on the subject of border security.  The illegal migration of aliens into the United States, especially at the southern border, has been cumulatively massive over past decades but neither major political party has been able to stop it completely.  The idea of closed borders continues to be fantasy dream, but has never yet become another conceptual Berlin Wall.  Oh, in passing, the Footloose Forester wanted the reader to know that he also visited the Berlin Wall before it was torn down.