The Costs of Maintaining Our Borders

This is not a post about the physical borders between the U.S. and Mexico and Canada.  This is a post about the myriad borders and boundaries we use to segregate ourselves into competing groups: rich vs. poor, white vs. black, black vs. Latin@, Republican vs. Democrat, the 'burbs vs. the ghetto.  It's a topic I think about frequently, especially in an intellectual way, in part because I'm prone to polarization (as anyone who's familiar with my righteous indignation knows).

I'm grappling with this topic as reports surface from around the country about fights over municipal consolidations, property tax increases for local school districts, and enforcement issues over immigrant access to education, healthcare and employment.

The economic crisis began in concentrated areas: more than half of all foreclosures are in only 35 counties nationwide; job losses began in certain sectors before spilling out across the economy.  In times like this, we may want to retreat inward, blame others for our misfortunes, or refuse to help those we've leaped to judge as deeserving their fate.  What is clearer than ever in this period of significantly reduced resources is that there is a quantifiable cost to drawing these lines of exclusion around certain groups and places.

Evident in Rhode Island's somewhat mystifying economic turmoil is the state's inability to shed self-defeating stereotypes about itself, as well as its entrenchment in policies of the past rather than new investments in its universities and budding high-tech entrepreneurial population.  If the majority of the state and its legislators sees RI as an aging, corrupt, rust-belt hopeless enterprise, the energy and commitment to invest in new businesses or homegrown opportunities (versus chasing fickle corporations and industries) will never materialize.

RI is one of the states mentioned above that is now embroiled in a legislative battle over whether or not to charge immigrants, including undocumented children, in-state versus out-of-state tuition.  It seems that the majority of commenters here would side with the immigration hard-liners, but consider this: providing in-state tuition increases the likelihood of a college education, thereby increasing the overall adult workforce in a state that badly needs to invest in its local labor and entrepreneurial pools.  Furthermore, the costs of enforcing expensive and wasteful employment and tuition verification programs, as North Carolina and Tennessee are considering (and Colorado just rejected), will take away from the overall funds for job creation and public education for all residents.  In order to keep those you vilify out, you'll likely have to accept that there will be less money to go around for the "deserving" among us.

As for the municipal merger question, it's a difficult one.  RI attributes its economic decline in part to its small size and reduced competitiveness.  New England is arguably the worst at regional cooperation in the US, given our (oft-vaunted) tradition of local town (hall) government.  This ends up draining resources for duplicative bureacracies across pretty small geographic areas.  In a state where one can drive from Boston to the NY border in about 3 hours, 391 cities and towns compete for resources and recognition.  Yet, issues of race/ethnicity and class are unavoidable in consolidation battles.  Often, ethnic enclaves, working-class communities and/or African-American neighborhoods have weaker performing schools, lower tax revenues, higher unemployment, etc.  Therefore, they are often the ones expected to give up their sovereignty to a wealthier, whiter, more suburban town or county, as the examples in the link above demonstrate.  Is this legitimate or fair?  Or economically necessary?

What if you are the poor person or the black family expected to move or give up your local school?  Haven't you given up enough already?

(Photo by TheTruthAbout...)