They can, but good luck overwhelming a country via a mountain invasion. First, the host country probably doesn’t care that much about people lurking in their mountains that much, but assuming it was a military operation, it’s TREMENEDOUSLY, difficult to move an army over difficult terrain. How are you going to feed those soldiers, and supply them munitions? If they’re literally mountain climbing with ropes they’ll be cut off from support easily. If they’re going across developed roads then the host country can retaliate in kind.
Usually borders are made around nature, especially difficult nature. It is difficult to expand your country over a mountain for example, so you just stop expanding there. That’s just how many borders came to be.
So if you try to cross those borders, they are naturally going to be very hostile with little infrastructure or a support system.
Even if you crossed the border, there’s a good chance you can be caught by police because you look “out of place”.
Some borders are, indeed, very strictly defended, like the North-South Korean border (The Demilitarized Zone). They have many guards patrolling the border, many cameras etc. If you come from the North Korean side, you’ll likely be caught crossing and be shot on the spot. Most people there are already too brainwashed to even want to cross the border – they don’t want to / feel a need to, because their propaganda portrays the South as a terrible place.
Borders which don’t have natural protection are indeed more expensive to patrol and maintain.
In these cases, many people can indeed cross the border and they do. But ultimately, there’s usually not even much you can do once you get there. You need some form of an identity card for accessing most facilities like Healthcare or schools, so you’re going to have a pretty bad time there.
They patrol the border. Also, borders away from approved crossing areas are often simply inhospitable. I live near the US/Mexico border and people cross the border through the desert where patrol is spotty fairly often. People die doing this a *lot*. The border between Mexico and California/Arizona/New Mexico is mostly miles and miles of inhospitable desert that is baking hot during the summer and frigid during the winter. If someone was to cross the US/Canada border (which isn’t super common but does happen), they could freeze to death, get lost in the woods, etc. I’m not sure how common it is now, but when I was a kid, people would float to the US from Cuba. They drowned a lot. I’m constantly hearing of people drowning trying to cross borders from Africa and the Middle East to Spain or Greece. It’s dangerous and people won’t do it if they have easier options, and it’s not the most common way to cross border.
Border security efforts in remote locations include many approaches including walls, electronic detection, air and ground patrols, tracking etc, but it is never enough.
Driven people are resourceful and creative on defeating feeble attempts at division. Not all border crossings are on land. Some by water and some by air and some with tourist, educations, health, political visas that are simply overstayed.
**FUN FACT:** The US now welcomes 1 million fully documented immigrants per year. The US resident birth rate is declining in such a way that we could actually benefit economically from at least 1 more million documented immigrants per year. Best if the rate were lifted to 2.5 million plus a year.
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