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Pros And Cons In Border Enforcement

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November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall falls amid the thawing of the Cold War. Consequently, an elated Europe welcomed a new ‘borderless’ continent. The Schengen agreements dissolved anachronistic boundaries that once separated nations, allowing peoples, such as the Ruthenians, to exercise a loyalty to the states within their immediate realm of influence, while simultaneously preserving their independent identities. A quarter of a century later the continent is amid a refugee crisis unseen since World War II. Detention, deportation, bureaucratic barriers, military, and satellite technologies have all been a part of the some of the most extensive and aggressive border enforcement programs in history. Endeavors that have stoked xenophobic fears and spawned grievous confrontations between some of the wealthiest nations on earth and a stateless people from the most impoverished.
Carry epigraphs Fortress Europe with a Herman Melville quote from Moby Dick. “In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport, whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” The implication being that a paradigm exists: if you’re affluent and connected, you can travel, even settle, anywhere you so choose. Conversely, if your resources don’t meet the level of the elite, then you can’t; you will find yourself at the mercy of governments’ most primitive, protectionist and chauvinist attitudes.
Exposing the human rights disaster unfolding throughout Europe, Carr

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