Border Fences Make Unequal Neighbors

*Interesting read from the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. It draws a comparative line between the unaccompanied-minor crisis at the border and the Israel/Gaza crisis in the Middle East. At the end, the writer calls for open borders, and you may or may not be in favor of that.  The statistics he cites, though, paint a telling picture. VL

By Phillip Cohen, The Society Pages

There is one similarity between the Israel/Gaza crisis and the U.S. unaccompanied child immigrant crisis: National borders enforcing social inequality. When unequal populations are separated, the disparity creates social pressure at the border. The stronger the pressure, the greater the military force needed to maintain the separation.

To get a conservative estimate of the pressure at the Israel/Gaza border, I compared some numbers for Israel versus Gaza and the West Bank combined, from the World Bank (here’s a recent rundown of living conditions in Gaza specifically). I call that conservative because things are worse in Gaza than in the West Bank.

Israel’s per capita income is 6.2-times greater, its life expectancy is 6 years longer, its fertility rate is a quarter lower, and its age structure is reversed.

Meanwhile, the USA has its own enforced exclusion of poor people.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by waynewhuang/Flickr]

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