evidence: For most of the tens of thousands of people who pass over it every day – to buy goods, go to work, holiday, or move in search of a better life – crossing the Irish border is now a painless exercise. The only giveaway may be a road sign switching from miles to kilometres, or the ping from a mobile phone changing networks. [...] With increased checks on the Irish border seen as politically undesirable, it may be that these in-country checks increase instead. They risk turning Northern Ireland – where one in five farm workers is an EU migrant – into ‘one big border’, as one civil-rights group put it. [...] People move, and cross borders in the process. That is a fact of life, not least in Ireland with our long histories of emigration, and today, when around 30,000 people cross the ‘frictionless’ Irish border each day.