Content area
Full Text
"The politically tricky challenge is to tap heightened attention and concern over border security in a manner that promotes rather than poisons cross-border cooperation."
It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that relations between the United States and Mexico begin and end at their shared 1,933-mile-long border. Indeed, the degree of harmony or conflict in the relationship increasingly depends on how the border and border-control matters are politically managed. The territorial line between Mexico and the United States is both one of the busiest and one of the most heavily policed borders in the world, where many of the most critical and sensitive issues in the bilateral relationship-such as trade, migration, and drug trafficking-come together.
Much of US policy toward Mexico has been driven by the twin objectives of facilitating authorized border crossings and deterring unauthorized crossings. Balancing these tasks has always been politically and bureaucratically frustrating and cumbersome, but both the challenge and the stakes have grown substantially as counterterrorism has been added to and redefined the border-control agenda since September 11, 2001.
While the post-9-11 security context has created new frictions about border control, it has also presented a new opportunity to reconceptualize the border and border controls. The political challenge for policy makers on both sides of the border is to creatively harness and channel the heightened border-security attention and anxiety in a manner that promotes greater cross-border cooperation and a more rational approach to border control. The alternative-a unilateral hardening of the borderline-would probably do more to deter legitimate trade and travel than to prevent terrorism.
The most promising approach to border management is to "de-border" traditional border-control tasks-that is, to move more inspection and control functions beyond the physical border itself. A number of policy measures can help to cushion if not entirely avert a collision between economic and security imperatives at the border. Successful implementation of these measures, however, ultimately will require not only more resources and cooperation but also a fundamental shift in the way policy makers and the Mexican and American publics think about border control.
THE NAFTA EFFECT
During the 1990s, border control was transformed from a low-priority and politically marginalized activity into a high-intensity campaign commanding significant resources and media attention. Driven primarily...