So I just learned that not all borders are fenced, very few of them are actually. So how are countries able to monitor thousands of kilometers of unfenced borders to fight off smuggling and illegal immigration ? Especially when it comes to long borders in arid/undeveloped areas, one example that comes to mind are the borders in Siberia.
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A lot of countries don’t because they have no reason to do so or are too poor to afford that. Guarding borders is extremely expansive.
Most countries that heavily guard their borders do so out of security reasons (Finland, Koreas, Israel etc.) This is “quite simple” you build infrastructure and station soldiers there. Their job is to protect the border in case of attack and not check every car.
Then there is a case for combating migration and smuggling. This is substantially more difficult, since you need to check everything and even so, people will dig tunnels, fly drones or smuggle themselves somehow. Some EU countries combat this by making migration and getting citizenship quite easy. They save a lot of money by having Schengen and subsidizing money for migration in countries where needed.
For sea borders it’s probably most difficult. It’s impossible to check every cargo ship, so you get coastal force with few ships to check unregistered ships and search suspicious ones. The majority of smuggled goods go by sea, but there is no practical way of combating this. You have mechanism to search for illegal cargo, but their biggest benefit is not actually finding said cargo, but disincentivizing smuggling.
For air guard, you have fighter jets and from 9/11 every plane is thourogly check and there is basically no significant smuggling. It’s a closed space so it’s quite easy.
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