Perspective: My New Mexico community would be a ghost town if Trump shut down the border
Roadside memorials are seen near the U.S.-Mexico border in Columbus, N.M. By Philip Skinner Philip Skinner owns the Los Milagros Hotel and drives a school bus in Columbus, New Mexico, where he was mayor from 2014 to 2018. He has lived and worked on the border for 30 years and ran a furniture manufacturing business in Mexico for 25 years. April 4 COLUMBUS, N.M.
We’re not the only community where this occurs. In places such as El Paso and Juarez or San Diego and Tijuana or Calexico and Mexicali, hundreds of children cross the border twice each day to attend class in the United States. Usually, those schools are private or, if they’re public, choose not to ask questions when students claim to reside with a nearby relative. They operate in a gray zone, where the boundaries are blurred.
This arrangement has been in place for generations. Though New Mexico uses a formula whereby school districts aren’t funded by local property taxes, there have always been a few residents who complain that Mexican families aren’t contributing funds to the system and ought to pay tuition.
I’m a lifelong Republican. I don’t believe in open borders. I don’t think it’s acceptable for people to flee lawlessness in their home countries and then break our laws to come to the United States. But as someone who has built a life in this porous place, who loves living in an area with two cultures and easy movement, I don’t see the dangers at the border that Trump’s speeches describe.
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