Perhaps a border is like a skin.
Every living thing that lasts draws a line between inside and outside. A cell does it with a membrane. A family does it with a door. A people do it with a river, a ditch, wall, boundary or statute. Not because they hate the stranger on sight but because winter comes, and someone has to know whose mouth gets fed first.
Without a line there is no neighbour. There is only a crowd, and a crowd has no memory and no duty. Kingdoms, tribes, city walls, same old argument. Who do we protect when the food is short and the men at the gate are not ours.
The student who “doesn’t believe in borders” still locks her flat. She has only forgotten that a country is but a larger room.
The Standfast.