Miller Hull

How a country treats its bordering neighbors says a lot about that nation. Recent budget proposals for the border wall promised by Donald Trump have reignited debates nationwide about how to handle the border with the US’s neighbor to the south.

Submissions to build the wall include a design covered with solar panels and one with embedded fiber-optic technology to detect people trying to cross illegally. But no matter what the wall looks like—whether it has feel-good solar panels or looks like a foreboding Roman defense wall—it is still a structure that says “keep out!”

In this global era, borders must be more than that. They also need to include points of entry and exchange where people and goods travel between countries. The renovated San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico is the busiest such land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. With an average of 50,000 northbound vehicles and 25,000 northbound pedestrians each day, the crossing processes more personal vehicles and pedestrians in a year than all other US-Mexico border crossings.

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