I am on vacation – a road trip with my wife and we are really enjoying seeing our incredible country. The other day, as we were driving along a thought hit me and I thought it was worth sharing.
As we crossed the border from Colorado to Utah, it occurred to me that we had no documents to authorize our crossing. We are citizens of Washington State, but all we had to verify that was our driver’s licenses. We made purchases while we were in Colorado and we paid taxes on those purchases. We were planning to make purchases in Utah and we would pay taxes on those purchases just like we had in Colorado. We had been and would be part of the economies of both States.
We hadn’t really thought about it, but we had been living our lives in accordance with the laws of the State of Colorado and as we crossed the border into Utah we planned to do the same even though those laws could be a bit different. This is an important concept because that is really all the changes when we cross a border – the laws change so our behaviors must change as well.
Colorado had no idea that we left Colorado and Utah had no idea that we were now in their State, but neither State seemed to care. Even the citizens of those States welcomed us and supported our activities as much as they could. Nobody challenged our presence anywhere we went.
It is interesting that the one thing we can’t do in either Colorado or Utah is vote. We cannot vote in local elections or State elections and I am pretty sure we would not be allowed to cast our ballots in a national election. What we can do is vote in our State of Washington elections via absentee ballots.
What I am describing here is the way the Founding Fathers designed our Federal Government in the Constitution. And, they said nothing about controlling our borders with respect to those who wished to cross peacefully. The current law controlling our National boarders, when broken, is roughly equivalent to a speeding ticket. Fortunately I was not speeding as we crossed the border from Colorado to Utah because my actions might have caused people to start talking about building a wall. Someone might be heard saying, “We’re going to build a wall along the border and Colorado is going to pay for it.”
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