Border Control

We United States types act like the world revolves around us. "Put more barbed wire around that border fence, Darrell," we say to our fence-manufacturing friend Darrell Jimbob Bob. It is no surprise that there are a lot of Mexicans trying to cross the borders, but our own egotism has blinded us to why they are here.

They are trying to get to Canada.

I came to this realization after my wife dropped me off at the airport for the eighteenth century conference I was presenting at. Everything seemed fine: I was there an hour and a half ahead of time, I had my toothpaste, etc. But when I was checking in, the computer told me I needed to have either a passport or my birth certificate ... neither of which was with me. Why did I need one of them? All I was doing was going to Canada, otherwise known as part of North America, to which I belong! It wasn't as if it was the Middle East or something. So, I had to call my wife, leave several answering machine messages, wait a while, realize she probably wouldn't check the messages once she got back, and call her again and asked her to bring my birth certificate.

The whole time I kept fuming, "What self-importance! Why do I need my birth certificate? Do you think someone wants to come to your country just in order to blow it up and/or begin a new life there? I wanna go to the conference!" But then it made me start thinking that many of us do the same thing when it comes to illegal immigrants from Mexico. Many U.S. denizens assume illegal immigrants are coming over to blow us up or to take our jobs, when quite possibly it is just that they want to take Canadian jobs, and we are in the way. (Perhaps they might blow us up so that we are no longer in the way, but I don't think so.) The Canadian government wouldn't make me almost miss my flight for no good reason--there must be some Canadian national superiority that compels people to risk deportation and travelling without birth certificates in order to get there.

Admittedly, most illegal immigrants say that they are trying to get to the United States, not Canada. Yet what better way is there to put Canada off its guard? The naive Canadian official thinks, "Okay, sure, the illegals got into the U.S., but that's where they want to be ... we don't need to worry ... no, we don't need to--ahh, it's too late, AARRRGGGHHHH!!!!" and then, something very macabre and illegal-immigranty happens to this official, all because he did not recognize the early warning signs, such as illegal immigrants saying they wanted to live in the U.S. Luckily, the embassy that made me almost miss my plane didn't fall for such ploys as this one, and threatened to refuse me safe passage to that utopian paradise that is Canada.

Happily, my wife came in time, I had my birth certificate, and I boarded my plane, but it was with a sour taste in my mouth. Canada, that great land of freedom and opportunity, did not want me to stay. It didn't matter how hard my desire to present awesome conference papers or how fervent my desire not to blow the country up, there would be no place for me there. Or for the English language, either.