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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here too many Americans. The United States southern

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Speaker 1: borders seems nothing short of a long, hot mess. Traffic

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Speaker 1: jams at major city crossings, miles and miles of barren,

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Speaker 1: unforgiving desert, drug smugglers, armed guards, illegal immigrants, walls, fences, barriers.

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Speaker 1: The US Mexico border is a flash point, especially now,

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Speaker 1: a political and literal line in the sand waiting to

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Speaker 1: be crossed. Name a problem that America faces today, economic, social, moral,

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Speaker 1: and somebody somewhere will blame the border for at least

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Speaker 1: part of it. This winding, raggedy, roughly two thousand mile

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Speaker 1: boundary that's about thirty kilometers has become as much about

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Speaker 1: symbolism as sovereignty. It delineates where two nations start and stop, certainly,

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Speaker 1: and what happens there at least partially defines both. We

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Speaker 1: spoke with Benjamin Johnson, a border expert and history professor

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Speaker 1: at Oola University, Chicago and the co author of Bridging

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Speaker 1: National Borders in North America. He said, in some ways,

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Speaker 1: I think actually people pay too much attention to the border.

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Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the things that are

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Speaker 1: quote unquote problems on the border are manifestations of larger

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Speaker 1: problems that didn't start on the border and aren't going

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Speaker 1: to be fixed on the border. The US Mexico border

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Speaker 1: as we know it today has been around only since

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Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, mapped out after the US annexed

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Speaker 1: Texas and won the ensuing Mexican American War of eighteen

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Speaker 1: forty six to eighteen forty eight. The area, of course,

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Speaker 1: was contested long before that, with Native Americans including Aztecs, Manchees,

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Speaker 1: and Apaches, Spanish and Mexicans all laying claim to the

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Speaker 1: borderlands at one time or another. Today, the border runs

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Speaker 1: from the Pacific Ocean to the e Gulf of Mexico,

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Speaker 1: making up the southern edges of California and Arizona, part

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Speaker 1: of New Mexico, and the entire southern side of Texas.

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Speaker 1: It follows the Rio Grand River in Mexico called the

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Speaker 1: Rio Bravo del Norte, from El Paso to the Gulf

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Speaker 1: of Mexico. The biggest cities along the way are San Diego, California, Nogalis, Arizona,

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Speaker 1: and El Paso, Texas. Those are the spots that many

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Speaker 1: think of when they think border crowded crossings with fences

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Speaker 1: and checkpoints manned by police and immigration officials. Most commercial

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Speaker 1: traffic and legal immigration takes place there, but the border

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Speaker 1: has a total of forty eight places where people can

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Speaker 1: legally cross. Outside of those forty eight are hundreds and

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Speaker 1: hundreds of miles that are largely unmanned by law enforcement,

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Speaker 1: often marked only by low fences, easily crossed on foot

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Speaker 1: if you can make it through the desert and terrain.

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Speaker 1: We also spoke with Ieva de j a professor of

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Speaker 1: anthropology and social studies at Harvard an author of Threshold

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Speaker 1: Emergency Responders on the US Mexico border. They put it

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Speaker 1: this way, It's really a patchwork of business and emptiness,

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Speaker 1: chaos and order. The US Mexico border, especially in the

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Speaker 1: bigger cities, is a living, thriving ecosystem unto its health.

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Speaker 1: Millions live in work in the immediate area, along with

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Speaker 1: thousands of border agents and immigration officers, are restaurant and

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Speaker 1: retail workers, doctors, lawyers, educators, you name it. Janiette said.

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Speaker 1: The people who live near the border live there often

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Speaker 1: because of the border, either because they have family on

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Speaker 1: both sides and it's easier for them to be part

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Speaker 1: of that family, or because the border creates opportunities. Some

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Speaker 1: in the US will go to doctors in Mexico, while

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Speaker 1: some who live in Mexico will send their kids to

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Speaker 1: American schools by nationals, often moved between the two countries,

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Speaker 1: sometimes daily, often during long waits to cross the border.

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Speaker 1: Then there are those whose families have been there for decades,

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Speaker 1: whose ancestors can be traced to a time well before

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Speaker 1: the US existed. Junette said. For those people, it's the

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Speaker 1: border that has crossed them. Their communities were split in

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Speaker 1: half by the border and the fence. According to US

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Speaker 1: Customs and Border Protection, some fifty thousand immigrants crossed the

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Speaker 1: southern border in May, some illegally, some who turned them

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Speaker 1: elves in It was the third straight month of fifty

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Speaker 1: thou plus immigrants. Authorities expect many others slipped through undetected.

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Speaker 1: If you listen to some politicians and pundits, these illegal

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Speaker 1: immigrants are the genesis of any number of problems at

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Speaker 1: the US faces. They occupy American jobs, don't pay taxes

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Speaker 1: and take government handouts. They smuggle drugs, crowd schools, commit

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Speaker 1: heinous crimes. President Donald Trump says they infest our country.

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Speaker 1: Others claim that immigrants and undocumented workers boost wages, grow

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Speaker 1: the economy, commit crimes at a lower rate than the

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Speaker 1: public as a whole, and enrich the American culture. D

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Speaker 1: juniet said the communities that live by the border, both

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Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats, Americans and Mexicans, they see this issue

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Speaker 1: much more reasonably. It's part of their everyday life, and

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Speaker 1: they know that this has nothing to do with security.

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Speaker 1: For instance, American towns like El Paso are just across

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Speaker 1: the border from Mexican towns like Seu Ladoires, which has

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Speaker 1: one of the highest homicide rates in Mexico, but El

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Speaker 1: Paso is one of the safest communities in the US.

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Speaker 1: Juniette said, no crime is pouring through the border. Only

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Speaker 1: those people that live in the region understand that. Trump,

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Speaker 1: of course, trumpets a zero tolerance policy toward a legal immigration.

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Speaker 1: He declared it a crisis earlier this year and ordered

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Speaker 1: in the National Guard to protect the border. He promised

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Speaker 1: famously to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out.

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Speaker 1: All of this, Johnson says, miss is the point. He said,

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Speaker 1: as a historian, there seems to be a widespread assumption

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Speaker 1: that we used to be in control of the border,

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Speaker 1: and at some point we lost that. And if we

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Speaker 1: hire more people or use certain technology like drones or sensors,

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Speaker 1: or build offense, that we're going to get that back.

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Speaker 1: That's just not the case. I don't know a single

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Speaker 1: point in history when the government actually determined who and

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Speaker 1: what got to cross and was successful in implementing that vision.

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Speaker 1: This is not about the border. This is about these

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Speaker 1: other things, and we just see them at the border.

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Speaker 1: All those other things economic disparity, racism, nationalism, fear, anger,

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Speaker 1: and crime, just to name a few, that seem amplified

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Speaker 1: at the border, do exist in other places too, from

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Speaker 1: Chicago to Washington, d C. To Seattle. Janiette said, the

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Speaker 1: border became this site, an object, a metaphor, even where

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Speaker 1: we misplaced very real economic insecurities and social anxieties. So

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Speaker 1: it is the wrong answer to very important questions about

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Speaker 1: the conditions of our society. Still, the US Mexico border,

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Speaker 1: thanks two decisions made in Washington, d C. And elsewhere,

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Speaker 1: remains a flash point. At least away from the border,

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Speaker 1: Passions run high, rhetoric runs wild. Johnson said it hasn't

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Speaker 1: always been this way and it won't always be this way.

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Speaker 1: Decades from now, when a quarter of the United States

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Speaker 1: is of Latino descent, I think we're going to have

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Speaker 1: a different politics and a different society. I think we're

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Speaker 1: at the high point of a kind of sound and

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Speaker 1: fury on this. Today's episode was written by John Donovan

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Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: lots of other current topics, visit our home planet, how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. M