I am American and I have never seen photos like this. I had no idea there are borders like this. Even though I LOVE the idea of open borders, I am staring at these pictures like “wait…people can just…walk across some stones or grass and BE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY??? and nobody stops them?? how does that WORK?!” So you can tell that my country’s propaganda has gotten to me by convincing me that this CAN’T work even though…it…obviously can.
These pics just seem unreal to me. I’ve been taught my whole life that this can’t exist. In 27 years no one has ever sat me down and gone, look, here’s how it is elsewhere. It isn’t impossible at all.
I want to add something, but I’d just be restating what they said. I.. didn’t know peace and kindness like this was possible.
Wow. And here I am with my privileged mind thinking “who needs to see this? We all know this is how it goes” but I guess we don’t.
I do want to take the opportunity to say that living in the EU is a massive privilege. Yes, it costs money, yes a lot of things go wrong. But over 70 years of peace in an area formally known in history for it’s never ending wars is an incredible achievement and we have the EU to thank for that. Let’s not ever forget that our grandparents and their parents and their parents and so on for hundreds of years grew up in a hateful and unsafe Europe. We cannot compromise peace and democracy. Not for money, not for immigration bans. Nothing is worth more than what we have right now. These pictures, as the comments on this post show, are not ‘common everyday situations’, eventhough it can seem like it. Protect the open borders. Protect the EU.
These are possible because there arent much tensions between the nations and they have a similar gdp per capitah. Because of this theres no economic migration between them.
I’m pretty sure there are places between Canada and the US where you can cross over accidentally without border patrol. Like in my province I mean.
I go up to a lake in northern Minnesota with my dad sometimes and we’ve accidentally driven boats into Canada before. It’s not marked. It’s pretty easy to end up in Canada there. Can’t end up in an actual city without actually crossing.. but you can get across on water. If coast guard cares they’ve never noticed.
The US/Canada border is incredibly peaceful. It’s not the EU, but if you have a passport you can cross on roads with minimal work. The only reason it’s not less secure is post 9/11 security.
ifesbob 