All this is one country, the border boundaries in these United States of America

[AltHispano]

After the previous thread. As you can see in the following map, everything green is a single utopian country. What do you think the politics and border security would be like? would there be a border wall? would the national guard have difficulties?

 

[Wendell]

With climate change, naval and marine forces and/or coast guard will patrol the North. The Caribbean border is hard to defend, but from a purely geographical perspective independent of culture, language, or anything else, that southern land border is sort of ideal.

 

[Ivan Lupo]

The Darien Jungle is probably better than any manmade wall as a barrier. The Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard would have a much larger political presence in the US due to their sheer importance in protecting and defending all the enlarged US waters, on top of inevitably projecting it's power overseas. And by this, I mean that there may be more former admirals and naval captains being elected to office than army generals, as has been the case in OTL. The next challenge is making everyone feel sufficiently American, as Protestant European-descended Americans probably find themselves as a minority among a very large and important Catholic populace with indigenous and/or African descent. In order to maintain the cohesiveness of this massive country, there will need to be a much more concerted effort to grant everyone equal rights, or else European Americans will continually face larger, more influential groups in government and get outvoted at each turn.

English, French, and Spanish will likely become co-official national languages, but English will remain the lingua franca at the federal level.

Mexico will likely be reorganized into a number of different states, not necessarily the existing ones of OTL, but borders may be readjusted and smaller states could find themselves being absorbed into larger states, or lumped with other smaller states to make a larger state. Mexico City becomes the largest city in this USA. The different Central American countries probably get to become their own states as well and be seen in a way similar to New England. The Windward and Leeward Islands probably get lumped together into one or two states.

Economically, this USA will stand head and shoulders over everyone else, being able to export a diverse array of goods all over the world. Tourism, manufacturing, agriculture, entertainment, shipping, heavy industry, fishing, you name it, this USA is the world leader. And even with these expanded borders, it's possibly easier to secure these borders, as the only real land border it has will be with Colombia. Once shipping lanes are defined and roads and railroads begin to link everyone together, it will become much easier to communicate and encourage a more "American" sense of belonging.

 

[kholieken]

more than 200 million Hispanic; six million Mayans; French-speaking minority; Blacks-minority; Protestant-Catholic tensions; numerous states with wildly different demography and culture; distant Federal government this new USA might have persistent social problem

 

[Wendell]

What about an earlyish POD? Eastern Canada is taken in the revolution and/or the War of 1812, or some TTL war in between. This hastens the end of slavery and exacrerbates the filibuster movement. Each Central American country has its own William Walker. The Mexican War sees a bigger loss of territory for Mexico ITTL. Russia sells Alaska to the U.S. to recoup financial losses in the TTL Crimean War. Rump Mexico, surrounded by English-speaking governments, still sees the chaos it did after the OTL Mexican War, resulting in the war between the liberals and the conservatives. Juarez and his liberals still win in this timeline, but press for annexation, which leads to mot Mexicans and Central Americans becoming bilingual in English and either Spanish or a native language, especially once the railroads are built, connected. The United States buys out the HBC, plus Newfoundland and Labrador as a result of the Great Depression, and collect Greenland and the Caribbean through the TTL Spanish/American War and the world wars, through conquest, purchase, or both.