I teach at a high school that is 95% hispanic. While I am not aware of any data on how many of my students are of Mexican descent, almost 90% of Hispanic Texans are of Mexican descent, and that matches my personal experience. When I started the job, I thought my high school was an outlier in Texas. I have only slowly began to notice, however, that I was seeing the future. The 2016 Comprehensive Biennial Report on Texas Public Schools (available for download here) lists Hispanics as comprising 52.0% of school children in Texas. That is a far cry from 95%, but the point is that schools like mine are not uncommon. But there is a larger point to make, and it is one that Andrew Selee deftly describes in his new book, Vanishing Frontiers: for many reasons, the United States and Mexico are more interconnected now than they have ever been, and that interaction has become almost uniformly a positive one.

The core of Selee’s argument is two-fold: 1) illegal immigration, especially from Mexico, has declined significantly in the last decade or so (here is some good data from Pew Research on that) and 2) Mexico and the United States now have a mutually beneficial relationship that is growing ever closer due not only to mere proximity but also globalization and Mexico’s growing economy. He makes this case extremely well throughout the book in his examination of the interconnectivity of the two nations in business, pop culture, family connections, and even the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area (more on that later).

Some of the facts and statistics Selee recounted truly caused me to reframe my own mind on these issues, so I’ll relay just a few. More illegal Mexican immigrants are leaving the United States than entering. There are over one million U.S. expats in Mexico today. Mexican directors have won the Best Director Oscar for the last three years. One of the most popular music groups in Mexico is a pair of sisters who sing a pop/country blend and were born and raised in Lake Charles, LA. Bimbo Bakeries, a Mexican company (which owns the brands Sara Lee, Thomas, Orowheat, and Ball Park), is responsible for around one third of bread sales in the United States.

The story that had the biggest impact on me, however, was that of the relationship between San Diego and Tijuana. Selee writes of how San Diego needed an international airport in order to grow the local economy by conducting business more efficiently with Asian companies, but there was a problem. The San Diego airport is too small, and the location leaves no room for expansion. The solution: a footbridge connecting an airport terminal in San Diego to the Tijuana International Airport! No joke. It’s there. International travelers check in on the American side, walk across to Tijuana over the border fence, pass through Mexican customs, and board their flights.

This bridge is both metaphorically resonant (“We built a bridge over the fence”) and emblematic of the larger relationship between San Diego and Tijuana. The two cities have been growing progressively closer for quite some time, cooperating on security issues and the like. In 2014 they even formed a joint bid for the 2024 Olympics, but they were passed over in favor of a 2028 Los Angeles bid. Taking U.S.-Mexico relations as a whole, however, this attempt may have helped pave the way for the now-successful bid for a trinational Canada-Mexico-U.S. World Cup in 2026. Mexico and the United States will be cooperating on the world soccer stage in just 8 years.

Selee’s book is terrific at bringing together seemingly disparate narratives and tying them into a broad theme. This theme is one that creeps in to casual conversation, especially in politics, but the facts are much different than common knowledge would suggest. Selee argues that politicians are running counter to the narrative that is so obviously there if one takes the time to look at the objective facts: the future is a more connected North America, not a more isolated one. Politicians are the only ones who can get in the way of that future. And Selee insists, with good evidence, that such a move would be a mistake.

I received this book as an eARC courtesy of Public Affairs and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

Vanishing Frontiers documents the changing nature of Mexican immigration and Mexico’s economy.

The wave of Mexican immigration to the United States is over. Both China and India send more immigrants. In addition, Mexico’s healthy economy has pushed wages higher leading to a large increase in the middle class. Cheap labor is no longer available in Mexico at least compared to other places in the world like China. Many, if not most, of the border factories have closed. Increasingly, Mexican companies are locating their factories in the United States to stay close to their selling zone. Despite these facts, 25-33% of American citizens dislike Mexico and feel Mexican immigration is a source of unfair trade competition and illegal drugs. Trump’s wall agenda feeds into those feelings.

If you are a supporter of Trump, you will not like Vanishing Frontiers' overarching dislike of his policies. However, there is some interesting information here about how countries move from third world to second. The world has changed with NAFTA and the book explains how the Agreement helps people on both sides of the border to better their lives. 3 stars!

Thanks to the publisher, Perseus/Public Affairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

In an era where south of the US border is consistently and viciously demonized as a different land that does little more than let the worst of its worst bleed in, Andrew Selee's "Vanishing Frontiers" is much needed. With clear language, well-organized sections and facts upon facts upon facts, this informative work takes what amounts to a sledgehammer to boogymen and unfounded fears spawned by petty nationalism, and makes it quite plain that Mexico is not something to be walled off from the US, both figuratively or literally. He clearly shows that the simple reality of the matter is that the two nations are already bonded together in a wide variety of ways, are only becoming increasingly linked, and to reverse this would fly in the face of longstanding trends, practicality, and common sense.

This book reinforced something I already suspected- Build A Wall is an exact opposite of what we should be doing as a nation. Like the idea of walling off the kitchen from the rest of your home- it's not only a dumb idea but close to impossible to live with at this point. The United States and Mexico are so intertwined in so many ways that we are going to have to be good neighbors to each other like it or not. I thought the book was well researched and was a quick read because it wasn't written for academia but everyone. I'd hand it over to a high school student studying civics with no problem.