New Mexico: Close borders?

Decades ago when I moved to California, I had to drive through a traffic checkpoint so officers could see if I was carrying any fruit from elsewhere into their state. It grew from a concern over fruit-borne diseases that could threaten California crops. In 1919, the town of Gunnison, Colo., successfully avoided the Spanish flu by posting the sheriff at the entrance to the town to stop any strangers from entering, on pain of going to jail. Just recently, New York disinvited travelers from Texas and other states with exploding coronavirus cases from flying into its airports. Now the European Union has barred all Americans from visiting because of our virus numbers.

If you drive anywhere in Santa Fe today, you will find the number of license plates from other states has grown substantially in recent weeks. Maybe now is the time for New Mexico officials to consider blocking people (at the borders) from Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and other high-disease states from visiting here. We have enough virus cases on our own without help from places that made the decision sometime ago to be less cautious than we. It seems there is plenty of “precedent” for New Mexicans to support what might seem to be an “unprecedented” step.

Good steps taken by the governor so far include asking visitors to quarantine themselves. But the suggestion has no teeth in enforcement or proof. So stopping the flow of visitors until the numbers improve is a drastic but far more realistic method of control.

Bill Dupuy Santa Fe