Breaking down the barriers

The 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has been commemorated by many politicians yet in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, there were 15 border walls. Now there are more than 70. 

Borders are designed to protect business as usual, including the ongoing exploitation of natural wealth and labour. Borders around the world are being hardened and  militarized. According to one forecast about the global homeland security industry, it is to reach $742 billion by 2023.  Hundreds of thousands of armed personnel and more than 2,000 detention centers that incarcerate people for the crime of seeking a safe haven or economic security from untenable situations and conditions. Guarding the frontier is one of the largest military operations in the world,

According to the International Organization on Migration, 32,000 people died or disappeared crossing such borders since 2014 – and that is an undercount, perhaps a drastic one, given that many deaths go unrecorded. All of this is in the context of more people on the move than ever before on Planet Earth, a number that is predicted to increase going forward as the climate crisis gets worse.   The fatalities during the period of the Berlin Wall’s standing is put at 140.

Corporations like Raytheon, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin are providing surveillance balloons equipped with high-tech cameras, robots, drones, and biometric systems, including facial recognition, iris recognition and digital fingerprinting. It is a massive money-making endeavour.

The Bill Clinton administration and its Operation Gatekeeper-type policies — that have been forcing people into the desert since the mid-1990s (a minimum 8,000 border crossers have died since then) — and imposing punitive deportation laws 

During the Bush administration border and immigration annual budgets went from $4.2 billion in 2000 to $14.4 billion in 2008. There was the construction of 650 miles of walls and barriers (much more than Trump.) the largest hiring surge in U.S. Border Patrol history (6,000 agents between 2006 and 2008, (which also exceeds Trump) and billions of dollars went to a hi-tech virtual wall, as well as bolstering a massive deportation regime.

Obama was called the “deporter in chief”. His administration expelled and banished more people from the country than any other president ever.
With their razor-wire fences and concrete barriers: the State ensures the control the movement of populations and the State fears losing control of borders.

The World Socialist Movement offers a new vision of the world - one where nation-states and their national boundaries disappear into history.

Adapted from this article
https://truthout.org/articles/borders-dont-secure-anything-but-global-inequality/