Borderless nations – Good idea or a mistake?

Spain’s worst terrorist attack ever on March 11th of this year killed 190 injured more then 1,800 people. To this day 18 people have been arrested. Most of those people came from North Africa, particularly from Morocco.

So how did those people from Morocco get to Spain? I did a little bit of research and found out that Morocco in fact does NOT have a Spanish embassy. According to http://www.goabroad.com there are 8 foreign embassies in Morocco: Angola, Argentina, China, France, Greece, Netherlands, United States and Vanuatu.

So it seems the only way for a Moroccan to get to Spain would be to get a Schengen visa in one of the three European Union countries’ embassies in Morocco – France, Greece, and the Netherlands. And since that Schengen visa is good for all the countries in the EU and some others, any Moroccan would be able to freely travel to Spain with that kind of visa.

Now, let’s say Spanish intelligence received a tip that a large group of Moroccan terrorists are planning on traveling to Spain and setting up various explosions throughout the country. So Spanish government decides to restrict granting visas to most of the male Moroccan citizens for a few months or even a year. How would Spanish government be able to enforce that? And can they do it that if they wanted to?

There seemed to be only two ways out of this situation, both of which are not very practical:

1. Either Spanish government demands that the 3 EU countries with embassies in Morocco stop giving Schengen visas to Moroccans, or
2. Spanish government establishes its’ own border with its’ own check-points and does not let in Moroccan citizens with Schengen visa into the country.

If Spanish government chooses option # 1 – what are the guarantees that those 3 EU counties with embassies in Morocco will comply? Further more, since Moroccans can get Schengen visas outside their own country, that means that Spain has to demand that ALL the EU countries stop giving Schengen visas to Moroccans. Which in turn means that because of the terrorist treat in Spain, Moroccans cannot travel to any of the countries in the European Union! Somehow I don’t think the government of Morocco and Moroccan people will be very happy with that and neither will all the EU countries which will lose a lot of tourist and business revenue. So that kind of scenario is not likely to happen.

For Spanish government to establish its’ own border and its’ own visa regulations would violate the European Union’s agreement. How would the European Union feel if suddenly one of its’ members would have their own special visa rules and would not honor the Schengen visa? Besides for being impractical (just think of how much resources both financial and people-wise Spanish government would need to establish its’ own border), this solution would also cause Spain to separate from the European Union.

My final thought is this – Open borders in the EU is a very interesting idea, it allows people and goods to move freely thought-out all the European countries. But at the same time it leaves EU counties more open to terrorist, since in the Open-Borders policy any given county in the EU can NOT control their own borders anymore, and cannot control who they let in and who they choose to leave out.

It would be very interesting to hear other peoples’ opinions on this issue, so I’ll probably put this topic in the forum, after I clean it a bit and translate it into Russian.