New Border

The state of affairs
The synthetic analysis of a territory in the grip of decay :

> 2330 Miles : That’s the length of the U.S.-Mexico border that stretches from San Diego to Brownsville.
> 807 Miles : This is the length that the wall built on this border occupies today, in 2022.
> 450 Miles : That’s the length of wall built during the Trump administration.
> 16.4 Billion Dollars : This is the amount of money allocated by the Trump administration to fund the construction of the southern border wall, of which 10 billion came from the Department of Defense.
> 36 Million Dollars : This is the cost of building a single kilometer of wall.
> 9000 Dollars : This is the cost of a single corten steel module (excluding maintenance costs).
> 55000 : That’s the number of steel modules currently abandoned and exposed to the sun in New Mexico, Arizona and California, a total of 500 million dollars.
> 147000 : This is the number of undocumented migrants arrested at the Mexican border between January and August 2021, the equivalent of 600 people per day, the highest number since the National Institute of Migration began publishing these statistics.
> 180 : This is the number of endangered species that depend on the migration routes, the corridors that the wall «shears». Among the 1500 species of plants and animals that inhabit the border between Mexico and the United States.

Damaged landscapes, increasing militarization, mistreatment of migrants by the U.S. Border Patrol, corruption, the cost of maintaining the wall, huge construction cost overruns, blasting of mountains, cut roads, destroyed sacred lands and places of worship, obstruction of the natural flow of water and the movement of wildlife, the list of negative consequences of the construction of this wall is unfortunately very long.
Today, hundreds of kilometers have been systematically degraded by the construction of this wall and entire regions are in need of partial or total restoration. Put another way, it is a real crime against nature that is at work all along this border.
To top it all off, this «permeable» wall does nothing to prevent the passage of migrants and the flow of contraband and drugs to the United States. The wall is easily sawed through, has gaping holes and requires repairs and almost constant surveillance. In some places on the border, it even forces migrants to go to ever more remote, steep and perilous crossing areas.
The report is alarming, the figures speak for themselves and it would seem that human folly has reached its peak through the construction of this border.
President Joe Biden has consistently campaigned on a clean break from the Trump administration’s policies, stating, quote, «my administration’s policy will be to stop diverting U.S. taxpayer dollars to build a border wall.» Ending Trump’s state of national emergency on the southern border and redirecting funds for border wall projects managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (Sources: The Atlantic, The New-York Times)
On this beautiful dynamic and while waiting for a potential future global immigration reform (it is not forbidden to dream).
It could be quite feasible to create a law defining peace zones on the border by creating a «Peace Fence Act» under the Democratic era of the Biden administration following the example of the «Secure Fence Act» adopted under the Bush era in 2006.
But in a more concrete way, through this territory we see a field of experimentation for a new approach of what could be the border of tomorrow. The American-Mexican border is, in our opinion, a «textbook case» capable of resonating with other border areas on the surface of the globe, also in the throes of decay.
Far from being a romantic or even naive approach to the very complex subject of immigration, we see a real opportunity to accompany the transformation of lines of separation and conflict into real places of life, dialogue and multiculturalism.
History speaks for itself, physical barriers will never be a viable solution for the national defense of a state and the security of people.
Through our proposal, we come to create a porosity symbolized by «doors», because we believe that it is thanks to these «doors» that a process of dialogue between people and states can be engaged.

The sine qua non condition for a perspective of peace between peoples.