BORDER/IMMIGRATION/MEXICO/WALL:" 'A nation without borders,' Donald Trump has warned us, 'is not a nation at all.' Trump was explaining the logic of the multi-billion dollar wall he promises to build along the U.S.-Mexican border, but he was hardly the first to make the case. Years ago, Ronald Reagan said much the same about the threat of illegal immigration, and others urging border vigilance have wrapped themselves in the high-flown rhetoric. Tee-shirts and coffee mugs have turned the idea into a saleable slogan.
There is a deeper point. Nations, unlike other types of states, do define themselves by the territory over which they claim sovereignty and by the borders that mark them off. They set rules about the appropriate social and political relations to be followed, explore and map the physical terrain, enumerate and classify people who live there, privilege certain forms of behavior they regard as 'civilized' and exalt ideas of citizenship and belonging that undermine other personal and group loyalties. Borders, at least in theory, make nations what they are and, by extension, what they are not."
– “America Is Better Without Borders,” Time Magazine, Nov. 1, 2016, Steven Hahn, 11/1/2016