In the United States, there is a large historical force that denigrates people who reside or come from south of our border.  We so often look down our noses, but enlightened thought tells us we do so to our own economic and cultural peril.  So many missed opportunities to connect!  So many lies we tell ourselves to make us feel superior, even though any religious or moral code worth a darn will tell you that all human beings under heaven are one hundred percent equal.  How can the United States overcome its prejudice to see that what this Hemisphere really needs is an American Union?

Anyone who crosses the U.S./Mexico border knows the tension; with the right papers in your car, you might get stuck in a two hour line without a restroom, then get searched if you have packed the wrong kind of banana.  The folks searching are heavily armed.  On both sides.  You feel that if you misstep here, at minimum you will have a costly delay to your trip, at maximum a scary detention.  What’s the difference between crossing this border and the one with Canada or crossing between European countries, where you simply show your passport and move on?  What, if not racial or ethnic prejudice?

Currently, there exists a First to Third World divide between the United States and Latin America akin to a Western Hemisphere Apartheid.  That division, that exclusion… is as responsible for border tensions and immigration demand as anything else.  Instead of whining about our southern border,  the United States government could choose to recognize its unique position to help our Latin American neighbors, extend a hand, and end the economic, racial and cultural divide that inhibits the region, eternally damning it to isolation, tariff and prejudice.

The biggest critics of Mexico and all things South of the Border are often self-proclaimed White Christians, the loudest ones residing in the United States Senate and House of Representatives—folks who don’t seem to know the countries they judge very well, nor their people, nor their own religion.  A real Christian loves their neighbor as themselves, never judges, and even loves their enemies.  A real Christian doesn’t name-call, or look down on people who look different, speak different, think different or pray different.

Could this region get together, form a union in the European style with our neighbors to the south and north, open up trade, exchange culture, ideas, technology and innovation?  Mexico and Third World Latin America could help folks in the United States with humility, religious dedication and keeping the sanctity of marriage, while we help them build better roads, centralize their utilities.  They could teach us how to value elders, keep families close and honor ancient traditions while we lift them to First World levels of trade, commerce and productivity.

We can trade farming tips, while we build roads and train routes across our borders.  Develop an American Currency like Europe’s Euro!  From the Patagonia of Argentina to the highest icy regions of Canada and Alaska, we could be a unified force of countries with unique difference, bonded by proximity and the enlightenment that would surely come with such a positive change.  Borders would be more token, less toxic, its patrollers freed up to keep the peace instead of wasting our time with searches veering dangerously close to fourth amendment violations in every lane.

The only reason suspicion of crime, tensions and migration demand at the border are as high as they are is because of the division itself.  We fear, keep out difference.  We criminalize immigration and travel into regions we judge as worse than ours.  If there is anything worse in other countries, like decentralized gas power and weak electricity grids down south, let’s blame ourselves instead of the immigrants from those countries fighting their way into our First World.  There is a fight because the United States government, like others, hoards land it did not create.

So many people here call ourselves religious or Christian, but instead of loving our neighbors into the First World, we doom them to a Third World lifestyle that pushes them to our doorstep illegally.  Open up, United States of America!  Share! Let’s form an American Union!  Be the Christians we claim to be, watch the benefits to unification roll in, not least among them the absence of border tension.