New book by Arizona journalist advocates for open borders

The border has been a sensitive topic for decades, with increasing calls for strong border security. A Tucson journalist is out with a new book that offers a different perspective on the ongoing border conversation.

John Washington’s new book is titled “The Case for Open Borders.” In the book, he revisits the origins of national security through border lockdowns. Washington also breaks down why experts believe open borders would be an economic, environmental, and ethical boom. He profiles people impacted by the border.

We welcomed the author to “Horizonte” to share his approach to tackling such a complex topic.

Washington said there were a lot of factors that led him to write his book, especially regarding immigration politics.

“I think what it comes down to is a fundamental question of fairness,” Washington said. “Right now, there’s a lot of people in the world who have the rights, and can enjoy the rights, of freedom of movement, and there is another set of people who are denied that right.”

According to Washington, there are billions of people who are consigned to political instability, persecution, the onslaught of climate crises and extreme poverty. He said those people are not granted the right to move, and if they try to do so, they can be subjected to blockades such as border walls.

“They can practically be hunted down by armed guards, they can be imprisoned in immigration detention centers and sometimes held there for years, sometimes tortured, sometimes killed and sometimes deported,” Washington added. “There is no other reason for that difference than where someone is born.”

Washington believes over time, society has taken strides to try to eliminate discrimination based on race, gender and sexuality. However, he recognizes where someone is born can cause them to be denied basic rights.

“There is such a disconnect between the reality along the world borderlines; you know, I live very close to the U.S.–Mexico border, and the way it’s talked about in the news, the way that the current national discourse is going, I think it has become just basically a football, and we don’t talk about the impacts on human beings who are forced to either wait or struggle to get over walls or find freedom or security,” Washington said. “I think we have sort of dumbed down the conversation to such a degree that it no longer really reflects the actual reality on the ground.”

Although Washington’s book is titled “The Case for Open Borders,” he is not actually proposing a world without borders.

“There’s a big difference between no borders and open borders,” Washington said. “Talking to experts and analysts, I think that a lot of people are actually pushing for open borders, for more openness, and not zero definition around countries.”

“The Case for Open Borders” is Washington’s second book. His first book, “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the U.S.-Mexican Border and Beyond” was published in 2020.