Ingolf Vogeler, Types of International Borders along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Conclusion: “Security” Landscapes of Exclusion

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12, says “Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his [sic] own,” but it does not assure the right of people to enter another country! Only the rights of individuals within existing nation-states are recognized but not the universal human right of the free movement of people regardless of national borders. Hence, “evil” governments, such as the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, Cuba, and North Korea, were/are shamed by this declaration, but all countries that keep people out are acting legally, and if not morally!
           In addition, international laws do not prohibit using propaganda and financial incentives to "lure" people to leave their own countries, as the West German governments did with Germans in “Communist” East Germany; the Israeli governments did with Jews in “Communist” Soviet Union; and the USA governments has done with people from “Communist” Cuba.
           In the final analysis, governments continue to use international borders to exclude “other” people and activities that they deem undesirable, regardless of the international and United Nations treaties that they signed. Ironically, governments justify their restrictive immigrant and asylum policies all the while promoting financial and manufacturing globalization.
           For the most part, international borders continue to be important and enforced, although some of them are “soft” and “hard.” But regardless, borders separate and exclude “outsiders,” forcing spatial differentiation between places and people, who are often even related to each other. International borders are, thus, fundamentally security landscapes of exclusion.