The freedom to travel isn’t a basic human right. It depends on where you’re born.

"No one dreams of becoming a criminal.”

Najia is just shy of 30 years old. Tall and willowy, she walks with an air of confidence, like someone who’s been told since she was young that she was something special — that someday, she would make her family proud. Her hair is long and plaited in the Nigerian way, but she now wears it twisted in a bun and tied under a brightly colored headscarf. She’s not accustomed to the style, and her scarf blows off her head as we wind through one of Morocco’s bustling medinas. Her skin is a deep brown and in the light, you can see a wide scar on her left cheek. She’s the kind of beautiful that makes people turn their heads when she passes.

Like hundreds of thousands of others who have fled political or economic insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa, Najia makes a temporary home for herself in Morocco, where her days are spent hawking goods, trying to save enough money to attempt a final crossing into Europe.

Morocco is only 8 miles from Spain, and is home to the last two colonial-era enclaves remaining on the African continent. This border region draws a rapidly expanding population of men, women, and children every year. Like Najia, most have traveled thousands of miles with the hope of building a better future — or, in many cases, any future at all — on the safety of European soil.

“Back home, I saw big men whose families were building homes with the money [the men] sent,” Najia said, ignoring the under-breath judgments of the locals who passed by. “I saw big men who were sending their children — even their daughters — to the good school in town, who were bringing gifts back for everyone in the village when they visited. Things like little chocolates with tin foil wrapping on every one. So, I thought, why can’t I be a big woman someday?”

Najia grew up doing the things that good daughters in Nigeria do. “I would clean the house, prepare the dinner, carry our vegetables to the market where Yumma sold them,” she said, referring to her mother. “I would always look after my brothers, so they didn’t get into too much foolishness and Yumma didn’t worry too much about them when she was gone.”

She wasn’t only a good daughter — she was a good student, too. An elder in her community said in a recent interview that it was unusual to see a girl doing so well. “She was so smart, that one, they couldn’t send her home to become a woman, even if they tried! She kept moving up the grades.”

It was around that time that Najia’s oldest brother died attempting to migrate out of Africa that she started to dream bigger. Hearing the story that his smugglers brought back — how he had been beaten so badly that they hadn’t wanted to bring his body home — could have influenced her to stay close to home. But it seemed to be the very impetus for Najia’s movement. As the next eldest, she felt like responsibility had been passed on to her — like it was her obligation to finish the journey that he started.

“I had this image in my mind of my mother in a house with a real floor. It was so motivating for me,” she said. She set her sights on being the first in her village to go to college and find a good job that could lift her family from their poverty.

But that was before she knew how the world worked — how all the borders in it are closed to women like her.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations after the refugee crisis that followed World War II, all citizens of a country have the right to live, work, and travel within any part of their birth country. We are all guaranteed this basic right to mobility. Every individual also has the right to travel from and return to their country, without the loss of citizenship.

The reality is that these rights are not always guaranteed. A person’s right to move beyond the borders of their own country has long been constrained by the happenstance of their birth.

“It was hard for me, realizing the only way I would ever do better in life would be by breaking the law,” Najia says, remembering when she first considered how the only chance she would have to reach another country would be by crossing its borders illegally. She had always played by the rules. But with time, the money she was saving for college became the money she was saving for a smuggler who knew the way.

***

Migration is universal, and it is nothing unique to humans. It’s the seasonal movement of animals from one region to another. It’s the movement of cells inside an organism. And for as far back as we can trace our own history, migration has also been a part of the human condition. Migration as we know it today is the result of a socially constructed binary — legal and illegal. These labels fundamentally organize how we all experience daily life. Who has the right to access space? And, who has the right to move within it?

Like Najia, many of us have been raised to believe that good begets good. We believe that hard work, good grades, and high test scores will lead to greater educational opportunities — that exceptional work is rewarded. If you were born in the United States, you may have seen the benefits that can be reaped through hard work — through self-discipline, determination, or perseverance. But what if you were born in a country that offered you no chance to pursue a higher education, despite your exceptional performance in school? What if you had seen that no matter how hard you worked, you could never promise your family would have enough food on the table at the end of the week?

What if the only chance you had for greater educational or economic opportunity lay beyond the borders of your own country?

The sad truth is that those who have little reason to leave their birth countries are among the very few born with the freedom to relocate. Those whose only opportunities for a stable future lie beyond the borders of their homeland often discover that they are trapped.

I was born in the United States to parents who were both full citizens at the time of my birth and was therefore granted certain rights — the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, including the right to move with little restriction to 100 percent of the 162 nations that were independently recognized in the year that I was born. I am statistically one of the least likely to move in search of economic opportunities, and yet I am among the small population of global citizens for whom the world’s borders are open.

I first met Najia when I was exercising this very right — living and working far from my country of birth, in North Africa. Ceuta and Melilla, the two colonial-era Spanish enclaves that bring an internally borderless European Union within the confines of the Moroccan state, are among the primary crossing points for all African refugees and migrants like Najia. From there, they attempt to scale the ring of razor-wired fences or paddle small boats across the Strait of Gibraltar to mainland Spain. Yet fewer and fewer are successful in these attempts, as Europe bolsters the security controls at its southern borders, and pays Morocco to amend its own immigration policies. Like Najia, the majority of those who attempt to escape now find themselves trapped once again — this time under brutal conditions in a cycle of failed crossings and repeated deportations in Morocco.

Born to Nigerian parents in 1988, Najia did not have the right to move beyond the African continent, with the exception of four small island nations. According to statistics published by her foreign ministry, less than 10 percent of the world’s borders were open to her. Those that were accessible represented a selection of some of the poorest economies in the world. Even then, Najia’s travel visas would be limited to terms of three to 90 days, and applying for them would often require showing upwards of $20,000 in her personal bank account.

In a country that continues to suffer from a history of colonial exploitation, political instability, and economic depression, Najia dreamed of little but escape. Yet she had almost no legal options to leave.

“I knew my parents would worry for me. Even before my brother was killed, we’d heard stories about all the dangers found on the journey north — the theft, the beatings, the rape — so I didn’t tell them when I was leaving. I was scared. At first, I thought about turning back almost every day. But the longer you travel, the harder it is to turn back, and at some point you realize that you’re going to keep going until you make it all the way. How do you go back empty handed to a family who still struggles to eat?”

I had heard similar stories from others who traveled from central and western African countries and crossed the Sahara Desert to reach the final border to Europe. More than 80 percent of the migrant population trapped in Morocco is under the age of 30 — more than a quarter of those are under the age of 18 — and nearly all have made the journey to Europe’s southern border on their own. “You can’t go back home until you’re a big man,” says Adeline, a delicate boy no more than 16 who wears an oversized Nike sweatshirt and shoes that don’t match. “We’ll make it to Europe, or we’ll die trying.”

The makeshift camps that are now overflowing with men, women, and children just south of Spain’s border reflect critical shifts in migration that are unfolding on a global scale. In Najia’s lifetime and in mine, the countries that have long promised the possibility of a second chance to migrants and refugees — countries like the United States, and those across the European Union — have reached new saturation points and begun pushing their border controls further and further south. Morocco is among the first to be impacted by this European-sanctioned practice of “push-backs.” Yet countries like Mexico, situated just south of “The American Dream,” will be similarly impacted in the coming years by strengthened borders, increased deportations, and new populations of migrants and refugees-in-waiting.

With populism on the rise across continents, and a new US president exalting an “America-first” policy rooted in reinforcing border controls and refusing asylum to all displaced populations, it becomes critical for us to re-examine our basic rights to mobility. As is reflected in the map below, a person’s country of birth determines the borders that are opened or closed to them, and the possible futures that they can imagine.

***

Can you imagine what it would be like, knowing you could never see the snow?”

Arav has been in the United States for four years now. His Indian accent is faint, and he speaks with a tone that gives even his most mundane assertions a sense of urgency. “Can you imagine knowing you could never see the places you’ve grown up watching in the movies — never even see the ocean? To feel trapped by the imaginary lines drawn around one’s country is a terrible thing.”

Arav has met many people who made the dangerous journey across the southern US border — their families often sacrificing just so that they could attempt to reach America. Their stories make him feel fortunate that the circumstances of his birth gave him the opportunity to apply for a student visa. He’s spent the past years completing his graduate degree in biomedical engineering at an American university. While he had once dreamed of staying past his visa’s expiration date in order to find a good job, the current political climate has made him question these plans. Like Najia, he had dreamed of taking care of the family he left behind (in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh) by following his passion — working at a Rehabilitation Biomechanics Laboratory to design improved prosthetics for amputees. “I think this country stands to lose a lot [from further restricting immigration]. There should be a desire to keep people who have taken advantage of the educational opportunities in the U.S. and now want to become productive members of the society.”

While many media reports could lead you to believe that migrants entering the United States are all moving across the US-Mexico border, most of the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented migrants actually arrived with legal visas, like Arav. Roughly 60 percent, in fact. And while a wall traversing the often difficult terrain that spans 1,900 miles along the southern border would do nothing to deter migrants like him from overstaying their visas, Arav argues that the political climate of “hate against foreigners” could.

Those attempting to curtail the flow of migrants who are crossing the border from Mexico could benefit from looking toward Morocco, which finds itself similarly positioned between two economically distinct regions of the world. There, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in reinforcing Europe’s southern borders in recent years: An under-water sonar detection system has been installed in the Strait of Gibraltar, and layers of 20-foot fences topped with razor wire ring Morocco’s Spanish enclaves. Every inch of them is now under constant video surveillance by Spain’s Guardia Civil, a national military force that is tasked primarily with controlling the flow of migrants and refugees from Africa. But even so, tunnels are dug, and a stack of makeshift ladders fashioned out of tree limbs behind the Guardia Civil’s office grows so high that the branches are routinely taken to the dump by the truck-load. As one officer explained, “Fences are built to be scaled.” About 4.6 million African migrants have found their way across the border and are now living within Europe, according to the BBC.

***

Every time I see fireworks in the sky, I remember crossing the border.”

Flavio had just celebrated his 17th birthday when he crossed the border from Mexico into the United States for the second time about three years ago. He was small for his age, his voice still high. The first time he crossed, he had been too young to remember his journey through the desert. But he said he’ll never forget the second journey.

He grew up in a small town outside of Atlanta — he and his two younger sisters attended the public school where he was an honors student, playing soccer in a community league where he was a rising star. As he got older, Flavio helped out at the mechanic’s shop where his father worked. He said he dreamed of becoming the first doctor in his family, once he realized a future as a professional soccer player was probably unlikely.

Then everything changed.

“After my dad was deported, our family was broken. My sisters cried for him all the time. My mom was always afraid. She stopped driving. She gradually stopped leaving the house at all unless she was going to work. It took two years before she just gave up and decided to return home.” But it was a home that Flavio had never known.

“That first summer back in Puebla, I finally understood why my parents had left. Our school was so poor. There were 60 kids sharing one little classroom, and everyone my age had already dropped out. Kids in Mexico, they don’t have any reason to finish school. There aren’t any jobs waiting for you even if you do. I knew I couldn’t sleep on that dusty floor beside my sisters for long. I hated watching my parents struggle to keep us fed. Back in America, I thought, I was building my future.”

It took Flavio nearly two years to save up enough money to pay the smuggling fees demanded by the coyotes who run trips from his town to the Mexican border. “I went from Puebla to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to a small town by the Sierra Mountains where they met me. It was such a beautiful place.” As night began to fall, they started to walk. “The coyote told us to bring food and water for the journey, but he told us it would only take one day.” Flavio had brought a few water bottles and some snacks from the convenience store. “I finished my water quickly, before the first day was even over, and when we woke up the next morning, I had nothing left. My throat was cracked. My belly was aching. We walked for three days and two nights in the desert.”

He was the youngest in his group of 10, but Flavio is a natural leader. He has an infectious optimism about him, and speaks with a certainty that belies his gangly teenage frame. “I kept telling the others, we haven’t made it this far to die in the desert!” Like him, they all had families back home whom they were hoping to support. They spoke of their parents and siblings, their spouses and children, as they trudged forward under the brutal heat. “A lot of them had never been to America before, so I told them, in America, you’ll become who you want to be!”

“I think that would make me the happiest now. To see my sisters have the kind of future that we all used to dream of when we were little.” — Flavio

Flavio had worn through the soles of his shoes, his feet open blisters, and he had less than $100 in his pocket when he finally saw the glowing lights of suburban sprawl in the distance. The coyote had left them earlier in the day and some of the group had parted ways to walk toward the safe house they had been promised. But Flavio was eager to break away. “I walked straight into the Motel 6 and spent the little money I had left to buy a room for the night. It was the Fourth of July, the big American holiday. Every Fourth of July, I remember swimming in the little pool in the parking lot of the motel.”

Flavio is now living back in Atlanta. His dreams of finishing high school have been sidelined by the necessity of work. He balances two jobs as a dishwasher at high-end restaurants and hopes to start taking night classes at a technical institute after he finds the time to earn his GED. No longer dreaming of becoming a soccer player or a doctor, he says he’ll find work as a mechanic and save his money so that his sisters can attend college in the United States.

“I think that would make me the happiest now. To see my sisters have the kind of future that we all used to dream of when we were little,” he said, sitting on the curb outside the restaurant where his night shift has just ended, waiting for the bus to take him back to the small apartment he shares with three other boys his age. Like him, they are undocumented migrants who took great risks to cross the border and return to the country they had grown up thinking was their own.

Born in a small Mexican town that he had little memory of, Flavio returned to the United States, only to live with the same constant fear of deportation that had kept his mother locked inside their apartment a few years before. Lacking the documents to complete his education or protect him against routine workplace exploitation, he is a part of a vulnerable class.

Fears like those Flavio carries with him every day permeate undocumented communities across the United States, especially since the presidential election. Recently implemented immigration reforms have already led to deportation raids, breaking up families across the country.

Sen. Maj. Leader Mitch McConnell recently estimated the cost of President Trump’s proposed wall along the southern border would range between $12 billion and $15 billion, while a study by the Washington Post found it could cost taxpayers as much $25 billion. What both estimates fail to calculate is the significant loss to sectors of the American economy that have developed a dependence on the exploitability of undocumented migrant labor over the past decades. The agricultural sector that supplies the food Americans eat relies on a consistent tide of migration from Latin America. So does the service industry, which pays an estimated 1.5 million undocumented service workers like Flavio under the table, and less than minimum wage.

Asylum, citizenship, and other state-sanctioned categories of belonging are no longer just markers of legality and illegality constructed to include and exclude. They are now the goods with which we barter. Passports are bought and sold. The human-smuggling industry is thriving. Even governments auction off belonging to the highest bidder, as is evidenced by the special visas the United States government hands out to any applicants making million-dollar investments. And as has long been true, it is those at the bottom of our global economic pyramids who end up paying the highest price for their chance at inclusion.

“I don’t think about building that house so much anymore,” Najia said, as she walked toward the bus stop with a brightly colored cloth holding her wares, knotted and slung over her shoulder. “My youngest brother was married last summer without me there to celebrate. The others all have children of their own. I live in dread of the day when one of my parents falls ill, and I can’t be there beside them, but this feels like my duty now.”

Like most who find themselves trapped on this side of the border, Najia struggles day-to-day to make ends meet, hawking goods in Rabat’s central medina. Most of the time, she sells a random assortment of goods discarded by Moroccans and picked out of the heaping mounds of garbage at the dump — children’s plastic toys with some part broken off, half-used bottles of cologne. Other days, she sells food that she’s prepared the night before — sweets she learned how to make from her mother’s recipes back home. The days are long and hard. She is shooed by the brooms of Moroccan shop owners and routinely assaulted by the uniformed military men patrolling the streets.

Although a house with a real floor seems farther away than ever before, Najia hasn’t let go of her dream completely. “My mother’s feet,” she says. “They’re still dusty, and someday, I want her to have better.”