If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown two things: 1) that ultimately, like it or not, perhaps within our children’s lifetime, a world order will materialize, and 2) that right now borders matter, especially to the US, perhaps more than ever before.
To protect its citizens from danger, a country - state, town, individuals standing 6 feet apart and wearing N95 surgical masks - must retain the right to wall off and defend themselves. Yet simultaneously, the Earth needs to operate as a unit - sharing information, supplies and techniques - while respecting the choices, cultural and otherwise, of the humans inhabiting it.
Over time, the internet, technologies yet to be fully implemented (like blockchain currency), and technologies still to be invented, gradually will reduce the influence of national cultures and government control. As the world has discovered recently en masse, it’s just as easy to study yoga from a teacher in Australia as with the neighborhood yogi. Though the human condition won’t go away - people will still pray, love, lie, cheat and fall ill - world values will gradually homogenize. But they are far from homogeneous now - and therefore, those countries that serve as a beacon of hope to the world must take steps to protect their way of life.
In the Heritage Foundation’s “The Trouble with Nationalism,” Kim Holmes explains that unlike nationalism based on cultural identity, “American exceptionalism…is grounded in America's founding principles: natural law, liberty, limited government, individual rights, the checks and balances of government, popular sovereignty…[and] the civilizing role of religion in civil society … We as Americans believe these principles are right and true for all peoples… Americans are different because our creed is both universal and exceptional at the same time. We are exceptional in the unique way we apply our universal principles.”
So as the internet and future technologies expose American values to the world over time, strong borders protect our culture, in addition to protecting our health and economy. By bolstering this protection with exclusivity, we incentivize those who admire us to adopt our ways, whether they become citizens or spread the word in their home land.
According to WhiteHouse.gov, “The United States must adopt an immigration system that serves the national interest. To restore the rule of law and secure our border, President Trump is committed to constructing a border wall and ensuring the swift removal of unlawful entrants. To protect American workers, the President supports ending chain migration, eliminating the Visa Lottery, and moving the country to a merit-based entry system. These reforms will advance the safety and prosperity of all Americans while helping new citizens assimilate and flourish.”
The policy is not anti-immigrant. Unlike pure economic conservatives who put financial gain above all, this administration seeks immigrants who not only contribute economically but also embrace our unique values and thereby preserve them.
In the classic movie Citizen Kane, the character Mr. Bernstein examines a ticker tape and declares, “It’s easy to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.” With respect to border policies, those who wish to make a lot of money want wide open borders - the definition of which is not “that anyone should be allowed into the country, no questions asked” but “that immigration should be based on the socio-economic needs of a country’s residents… Other than [rejecting individuals who pose a threat], who brings whom into the country and for what reason is none of [government’s] business.”(Heritage)
The rich and powerful hope to exploit such a policy. Michelle Malkin, in “Open Borders Inc.: Who’s Funding America’s Destruction?” explores how “‘foreign and domestic enemies’—among them George Soros, Silicon Valley billionaires, and assorted ‘globalists’—are working together, under humanitarian cover, to throw open the nation’s gates” (New Yorker). Why? Because, by destroying the values which make America an economic powerhouse, they cripple competition.
That powerful individuals and corporations, seeking government control, exploit the immigration issue is apparent in the Left’s extreme flip-flops. Traditionally, the Left has sought strict border control to protect labor. It’s only since President Obama, who abandoned the working class for Silicon Valley and identity politics, that the Left became schizophrenic - declaring there is no border crisis (and so no need for a wall), then a crisis so bad they claimed Trump built “state-sanctioned concentration camps,” and finally calling anyone, including Bernie Sanders (who, like Marx, opposes any open borders) a “nativist,” a word which activists made synonymous with racist. Now after years of victimization by the Swamp, populists on both sides agree: “Today’s well-intentioned [Leftist] activists have become the useful idiots of big [multi-national] business.”
President Trump, as a forward thinking leader who happens to owns country clubs, recognizes that borders do more than protect the economy, social services, and citizen’s health and safety. They remind the world that membership in our “club” of Exceptionalism, requires that one uphold and respect what truly unites our club members: the constitution and the rule of law. Race and creed don’t matter a jot.