Borders are getting to be more and more meaningless. This was initially driven home to me when details of the Mahaffey and French murder trials, under a publication ban in Ontario, surfaced on my computer screen in BC under the subject line "YOU CAN'T READ THIS!". The inexorable pace of globalization, initially visible to me in the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, has only accelerated. The successful destruction of the World Trade Centre towers was no more nor less than the marching on of globalization. Not only do all places have more access than ever before to markets in other lands, people in all places have more access than ever before to initiate terror in other lands. Get used to it.

In the midst of all this, there is a striking image in the growing number of illegal (mostly Latin) immigrants in the US and the bizarre contrast of the growing drive to expel all illegal immigrants (mostly Latinos) with the growing influence of Latinos in the American political political process.

And now the Dutch have begun expelling asylum-seekers -- not that the politicians believe that's the right thing to do. They're just scared spitless that another Pim Fortuyn will show up to replace the one who's gone.

The countries of the world are becoming irrelevant and not even the one-and-only hyper-power, the USA, is exempt. The funds being spent on immigration-regulation enforcement are sunk costs that should be brought up short at the earliest possible opportunity. The money being spent on them should be poured into something more profitable and beneficial, and not just for those countries who feel this compelling need to protect their own borders. In recognition of the fact that there is but one planet and one human race they should be into things that benefit humanity outside the borders of those countries. And it should be done in small pieces because it is at the level of individuals, families and neighbourhoods that the lasting change must be brought about to remedy the basic lacks that are fuelling the desparate felt need for what ends in "Illegal Immigration."

These people should not need to feel that in order to better themselves, they must leave their own country to go to another one that must have their labour but is not necessarily willing to admit it (or them) even to themselves. Such opportunities can and must come to them where they are and ultimately we will find it more cost-effective to service these people where they are than to keep them out of our own home towns. But if we can't attract them to stay where they are, rather than chasing them down to try shipping them back, we should recognize the value that folks with more-than-average initiative and chutzpah are likely to contribute to us than drain from us here in their new homeland of choice.