In 1983, Donna Ann Baker, a Canadian, married John McCall, an American, in Madoc, Ontario, a rural town halfway between Toronto and Ottawa. The McCalls set up their lives in Chicago, where both their children were born and would take their father’s U.S. citizenship. The family later moved back to Ontario, where Donna worked for decades as an ICU nurse. She would regularly drive to visit their adult children who had settled on the U.S. side of the border.
This article has been adapted from When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders by Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman (Oxford University Press, 344 pp., $29.99, January 2025).
In February 2020, just before Canada instituted strict border controls in an attempt to halt the spread of COVID-19, Donna was diagnosed with liver failure. She was put on the transplant list, but as her condition worsened, her family pleaded with the Canadian government for a compassionate exemption that would allow her children, Ian and Meghan, to enter from the United States to help with her care. Both children had birth certificates showing their right to enter Canada based on their mother’s Canadian citizenship, but their passports were American. They were told their best hope was to file for Canadian citizenship, but they would not be allowed to cross the border until the applications were approved.
It did not happen in time. Donna’s condition deteriorated rapidly, and she entered the hospital. With the applications mired in the Ottawa bureaucracy, the decision was made to pull her off life support. She said goodbye to her children and grandchildren on FaceTime before passing away on Aug. 10. One week later, the citizenship applications were approved. Ian and Meghan traveled to Canada, quarantined for 14 days, and attended their mother’s memorial service.
Donna’s story is only one of countless such dramas around the world. It inspired the creation, in May 2020, of Faces of Advocacy, a Canadian grassroots organization set up to safely reunite Canadian families separated by pandemic-related border restrictions. They gathered over 12,000 members who rallied for policy change, pleading, “We are not asking for open borders. We are just asking to be together.” In part due to the organization’s lobbying, the Canadian government established a process to exempt extended families and unmarried couples from the restrictions on non-essential travel. Enacted in the fall of 2020, the exemption allowed siblings, adult children, grandparents, and committed partners to reunite with their Canadian loved ones.
People chat across the border fence erected due to COVID-19 restrictions between the towns of Nova Gorica, Slovenia, and Gorizia, Italy, on June 3, 2020. Jure Makovec/AFP via Getty Images
Faces of Advocacy was not alone in winning small victories. In Europe, a similar group—Love Is Not Tourism—was formed to fight for unmarried couples separated by the border closures. The group’s name was a direct criticism of government policies that barred “non-essential” travel. “We do not wish to travel and sightsee,” Felix Urbasik, the German programmer who founded the group, wrote on his website. “We have one destination: the arms of our loved ones. We are willing to go into quarantine for however long it takes. We are willing to get tested as many times as it takes.” The campaign had some success in Europe. Germany, France, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and several other countries modified their restrictions in the summer of 2020 to permit unmarried couples to reunite.
In a similar effort, the group “Stranded Aussies,” representing Australian citizens unable to return home during the pandemic, successfully challenged the government before the United Nations Human Rights Committee for violating the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which requires that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.”
A woman looks out of the window at a hotel where travelers returning from overseas stay in mandatory quarantine in Melbourne, Australia, on March 30, 2020. William West/AFP via Getty Images
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A person in full white protective gear stands with his arms crossed behind a barricade with red and white tape surrounding it. His protective gear includes a full-body suit and a surgical mask. - A guard wears a protective suit as he watches over a barricaded community that was locked down as part of China’s zero-COVID policy in Beijing on March 21, 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
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A person shouts as they hold up both arms, one in a fist, and the other one holding a blank sheet of paper. Others in the crowd wear masks, use bullhorns, and hold up similar blank sheets of paper during a nighttime street demonstration. - Protesters shout slogans and hold up blank white paper during a protest against China’s strict zero-COVID measures in Beijing on Nov. 28, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Organized efforts to make COVID-19 restrictions more humane were not just limited to democratic countries. Even under China’s strict censorship and protest laws, citizen action was able to move the needle. Pressure from the group China International Student Union likely played a role in Beijing permitting some Chinese students to begin returning from abroad in late 2022, when draconian zero-Covid restrictions were still in place. The so-called white paper protests—named after the plain sheets of paper held up by demonstrators in silent protest—against the lockdowns in China were one of the largest public uprisings since the Tiananmen Square protests, and they were forcefully suppressed. But they likely helped persuade Communist Party leadership that a continued total lockdown had become untenable. China’s pandemic restrictions were removed quickly after the protests; restrictions for international arrivals were also phased out beginning in January 2023.
Not every campaign was successful. When U.S. President Donald Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was asked in July 2020 whether Washington would follow the European lead to help reunited cross-border couples and families, she said that “this President will always put America first.” Despite the lobbying of newly formed advocacy groups like those in Canada and elsewhere, the Biden administration was one of the world’s longest holdouts in reopening borders after vaccinations had been rolled out and the pandemic waned.
Protesters stand behind a barrier during a demonstration against the closed German-Polish border, seen in Goerlitz, Germany, on April 24, 2020.Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images
Successful or not, these efforts were an unprecedented response to an unprecedented shock: Citizens of countries who had largely enjoyed free and easy travel organized to fight for their right to live across borders—and in some cases for their right to simply return home. No longer was it just migrants who faced impenetrable borders. Suddenly, they had become an obstacle to anyone living a life in any way international: cross-border workers, foreign students, temporary migrant workers, tourists, and those with family or other important relationships in a different country. COVID-19 was the first crisis in memory that disrupted freedom of movement on a global scale. Among those that were affected, the experience has left deep scars, and it has reframed the issues around border controls and the freedom to travel in lasting ways.
Even if life has returned to something like the pre-COVID normal, the experience should serve as a wake-up call that in a world where borders are growing ever stronger—and where populist politicians and their growing numbers of followers call for ever tighter border controls—cross-border relationships and other international ties have become precarious. Many of those affected by the pandemic era’s border closures were from wealthier countries, and they enjoy greater political and economic influence than most migrants from poorer countries. For the first time, rich country governments took the tools they routinely use against less privileged migrants and asylum seekers and turned them on their own citizens and those of other countries who had long enjoyed almost unfettered travel.
COVID showed the world that, if left unchecked, governments will continue to increase their capabilities to restrict borders, with too little regard to the damage and disruption they cause in people’s lives. These are the same governments, of course, that for decades have been only too willing to profit from the movement of tourists, students, and migrant workers. Those competing goals—promoting mobility while tightening borders—offer an opening for advocacy groups to insist on stronger guarantees that protect the freedom to have cross-border relationships and an international life. But progress will not come easily. Governments jealously guard their sovereignty, and nowhere more than at their nation’s borders.
Freight trucks pile up at the border that connects Windsor, Canada, to Detroit, Michigan on March 18, 2020, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the closure of the border to nonessential travelers. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
Can the world do better next time in protecting those whose lives span borders and avoiding the economic damage from large-scale travel restrictions? Unfortunately, there seems little doubt that governments would respond similarly in a future pandemic. Border closures were popular among voters and praised by the media almost everywhere they were implemented, boosting the governments that embraced them. An Australian official told us that, despite the international controversy surrounding his country’s especially harsh border restrictions, he had little doubt that Australia would do the same in a future outbreak.
Change will require a strong voice from those who are harmed by border restrictions. Those separated from homes and families by COVID border closures organized themselves and leveraged the reach of social media; it will be harder for governments in the future to simply ignore their voices. The experience of an indiscriminate crackdown has also torn down the distinction between legal and illegal immigration: People with the privilege of holding passports that permitted relatively free travel before the pandemic have hopefully gained a new awareness for the plight of more precarious migrants who routinely face the sort of border obstacles that became global during the pandemic.
Travelers and immigrants from wealthier countries discovered that, in extreme situations, they could face the same family separations that for decades have been endured by migrant workers, asylum seekers, and others from poorer countries. During COVID, all of those living their lives across borders faced massive discrimination by governments. From cargo and cruise ship workers to migrant laborers to those with partners and families abroad, they faced restrictions far beyond those forced on other citizens, other than during the most severe, and usually brief, domestic lockdowns. These people played by the rules, and then the rules changed.
People look through the U.S.-Mexico border fence in the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood in the Mexican state of Baja California, seen on Oct. 3, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images
There are three broad sets of changes that could go a long way to strengthening protections for those living across borders without unreasonably tying the hands of governments to respond to crises. The first is the hardest: Countries should redouble their efforts to agree on cooperative international mechanisms to address regional and global crises while minimizing the use of disruptive border closures. Stronger collaboration among governments—almost wholly absent during COVID—could have minimized harm. For future pandemics, there has been some progress revising the International Health Regulations, the World Health Organization’s rules for pandemic response, in ways that might ensure broader cooperation than was the case during COVID. But the new regulations are all but silent on government use of travel restrictions. The 2018 adoption of the U.N. Global Compact for Migration is a promising development in strengthening the norms around migrant protection, although it had little impact during the pandemic. Regional mechanisms to manage migration and borders should also be strengthened.
If such negotiations are challenging and expectations should therefore be modest, there may be some new incentives for governments to cooperate. The COVID shutdowns showed the catastrophic costs for countries, regions, and cities that depend on tourist revenues and international students. Integrated cross-border regions, such as those straddling the Rhine between France and Germany and the Svinesund between Norway and Sweden, were especially hard hit as border closures disrupted work, schooling, and access to medical care. In addition, many countries are seeing their working-age populations shrink and urgently need more migrants. Others are competing to lure digital nomads—remote tech workers with the freedom to work anywhere. Stronger international norms to better protect the rights of these and other border crossers would be a boost to the global economy. Set against those incentives, however, is a deteriorating geopolitical landscape, with millions of people on the move fleeing war, gang violence, corrupt governments, and environmental degradation. Any concessions to sovereignty, especially on a core issue like border control, will be immensely challenging to negotiate.
A second, more promising option is changes in national laws and practices, in particular the constraints around the use of emergency powers. If COVID showed us anything, it is that in the absence of constraints, governments will take the popular step of shutting borders and keep them closed for far longer than warranted. While no government would willingly deprive itself of tools like border closures to deal with emergencies, that does not mean such powers should be immune to oversight by legislatures and courts. In particular, migrants and other border crossers faced massive discrimination throughout the pandemic despite international agreements that emergency powers should be used in a limited and non-discriminatory fashion.
Colombian citizens wait to enter Colombia in front of a line of police on the Ecuadorean side of the Rumichaca International Bridge on March 17, 2020, during COVID-related border restrictions.Leonardo Castro/AFP via Getty Images
Some legal scholars have called for courts to exercise greater scrutiny in evaluating the use of emergency powers—balancing the nature of the emergency against the rights being violated, and ensuring that government interventions are the least restrictive needed to achieve the public policy goal. Few courts were willing to do so during the pandemic, not least due to a long tradition of deferring to government actions at the border. In most countries, courts also have limited jurisdiction over non-citizens facing border restrictions, even though the actions affect the rights of citizens separated from family members. Those living across borders are as deserving of legal protection as those whose choices have kept them closer to home.
Finally, national officials need to take far more seriously their commitments to limit social harm when they pursue broader public goods. The utilitarian logic of the pandemic, in which governments tried to protect the majority of their people at the expense of outsiders—who in some cases even included citizens living abroad—was the result in no small part of government incompetence. The U.S. government, for example, chose to “resort to the blunt instrument (of border closures) because no better ones were available,” the COVID Crisis Group—comprised of U.S. public health and security experts convened to study the lessons of the pandemic response—wrote in its 2023 report. Governments need to develop better tools to manage the risks of pandemics, much in the way they developed measures after 9/11 to manage some of the risk of terrorists crossing borders without resorting to economically and socially harmful border closures. South Korea and Taiwan, which combined flexible and adaptive border restrictions with intensive contact tracing that stopped the outbreak in their early stages, showed that more sensible, less costly approaches were possible even during COVID. With a little effort, in future pandemics, governments should be able to achieve the benefits of travel restrictions in reducing disease spread at much lower costs to their economies and affected individuals.
Except in rare short-term emergencies, rigid border controls should be understood as a failure—the inability of a government to address a problem with more effective and less costly measures. When dealing with anything perceived as a threat from abroad—pathogens, harmful drugs, terrorists, or unauthorized migrants—effective responses by governments require a broad range of measures, of which border control is only one part and often only a small one. Border agents regularly interdict shipments of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, and other harmful drugs, but there is absolutely no indication that such border seizures have made an appreciable difference, absent domestic measures to reduce demand. The United States and Europe have at times been able to reduce unauthorized migration through deterrent measures at their borders, but these have rarely lasted long and rely on harsh and often violent means that endanger vulnerable migrant populations.
All departure lanes are shown closed at the Port of Dover, the border crossing from the United Kingdom to France, on Dec. 21, 2020. Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images
Heavy-handed and discriminatory border restrictions, such as the George W. Bush administration’s National Security Entry Exit-Registration System targeting citizens of Muslim-majority countries and Trump’s “Muslim ban,” were political stunts that did not bolster counter-terrorism capabilities and harmed thousands of innocent individuals. The same holds true for pandemics. Except in a few island nations—and even there with limitations—border controls will offer modest benefits at best in the absence of effective domestic public health strategies.
Sensible policies can reduce the need to resort to blunt instruments like border closures, but only if governments invest in developing the needed capabilities. Such efforts should be a priority because governments continue to encourage cross-border mobility for their economic benefits—without warning the workers, students, tourists, and migrants for whom countries compete of the risks they assume in building their lives across borders.
Five years after the world first became aware of the COVID outbreak in China, most of us have moved on. But many still live with the COVID tragedy. Those appalled by the situation faced by Donna McCall’s family—who had no other choice but to say their last goodbyes online—have an opportunity to hold their governments accountable and insist that they do better the next time around. Governments certainly can and will close borders again during future crises, but they now face a far more engaged, determined, and passionate community that will not stay quiet.
