Border-Jumping for Traditionalists

With one ear, I am listening to Joseph Ellis on CSpan2 discuss the relationship between the new United States (in the 18^th Century) and the Indian tribes. Apparently George Washington had a threshold problem in treating with the chiefs: he couldn’t deliver. That is, Washington might have wanted to guarantee the security of Indian lands but meanwhile, his European-Americans were tumbling out into the new frontier and there was nothing, practically speaking, he could do to stop them.

May be excused if I note the beginning of a grand tradition here? Seems like he had the same problem we have/had when we tried to keep 12 million illegals from storming the barricades today. It’s not that we might not want to stop of it—clearly, quite a few Americans do want to stop it. But the inconvenient truth is that we haven’t a clue how to do it.

OK, I guess if you are willing to devote the resources that the Soviets devoted to keeping people in, then you might staunch the flow, at least for a couple of generations, until the dam breaks and the flood comes raging through anyway. But without spotlights, brick walls, electric fences and battalions of sharpshooters, mass (im) (e)migration control is simply not an option, except in the rather short term. And that is the sort of Sovietization the United States has never been willing to accept, and is not willing to accept now. Border jumping is, as they might say, as American as apple pie. Or chili rellenos.

Afterthought: Of course, this may reinforce the notion that we can expect the United State to split up within, say, 50-75 years.