Something there is that doesn't love a wall

Monday will be a sad day for Washington and other states that border Canada. Canadians and returning Americans will need passports or their equivalent to enter the country.

For years, driving back from Canada was a breeze. The immigration officer glanced at the interior of your car, asked you where you were born, how long you had been out of the country, and whether you had anything to declare. If nothing seemed odd, he waved you on. The entire process could be completed in a minute.

This led Americans and Canadians to feel like honorary citizens of each other's country. Shoppers from Canada did their shopping across the border in the United States, or vice versa, depending on whose currency was stronger at the time, and whose taxes were least onerous. When the currencies were close to par, as they often were for prolonged periods, Canadian coins were freely accepted on this side of the border, and were widely circulated, at least within Washington. As this week's Economist observes, in villages on the Vermont-Québec border one sometimes finds houses and civic buildings straddling the boundary line.

All this has changed since 9-11. Janet Napolitano says she wants to "change the culture" along the border to make it clear that "this is a real border." In other words, no more patty-cake with those Canucks. Remember -- they are not Americans.

National security is important, but so are other factors. Factors such as friendly, casual, informal relations with the people who are by far our closest friends on earth, friends whom we all too often ignore when we aren't actually abusing their friendship.

I just returned from Europe. Under the Schengen Agreement, twenty-five European countries have a common external border. I flew into France, changed planes and continued to Italy. Once I passed through French immigration, travel to any other Schengen nation, such as Italy, was considered domestic travel. A year ago, my family drove from Stuttgart to Strasbourg. As we crossed the Rhine, the once fiercely defended German-French frontier was marked by a single sign that read "France." We could see remnants of the pre-Schengen border crossing plaza. Not long ago, we would have sat interminably in that plaza, our motors idling, waiting to pass from one country to the other. Now, it's as easy as crossing the Columbia from Oregon to Washington.

Is there any reason whatsoever why Canada and the United States -- countries so culturally similar and historically friendly -- could not agree on a similar open border with a coordinated external immigration policy? If France and Germany can do it, not to mention Portugal, Estonia, and Greece -- why not two countries that are "children of a common mother," as the Peace Arch at the border crossing declares us to be?