This text book is designed around the idea that there are approaches beyond the textbook that help to broaden students’ views of complex topics such as poverty and immigration. The ability to understand and communicate with each other across cultural barriers is a fundamental prerequisite for making societies work. The U.S.-Mexican border has been misunderstood by those who live far away from it. However, for those living within this long 2,000 mile corridor, the border becomes a unique hybrid community full of challenges and opportunities on both sides of the border. This corridor created by a history of conflict and disjointed politics, functions like no other border on this planet. Despite the columns that separates these two cities, San Ysidro and Tijuana remains a single community. The fence is just an inconvenient reality that is circumvented by hundreds of thousands transborder residents who commute through it everyday.