Germany brought back border checks to slow immigration. They also slowed commerce.

A German border patrol officer stood in the middle of the highway that crosses from Poland into Germany, waving vehicles off the road. Trucks were sent to one side, while cars were sent to another.

Europe’s open borders should make travelling from Warsaw to Berlin as easy as going from New York to Chicago, with no official border crossing and no passport control. But in 2024, in an effort to crack down on undocumented immigration, Germany imposed checks at all land crossings and several airports.

At this one, a series of shipping containers have been converted into offices, and a large tent — big enough for several cars to drive into — protects the officers from the sun or rain. When a car pulled in, another officer took over.

“ID, please,” he said, introducing himself.

With some vehicles, he asked for more: a driver’s license or registration; with others, he asked to see into the back seat or into the trunk.

The first thing is to check that people have the right papers, his colleague explained, because you have to have the proper documents when you cross a border. If the person is not an EU citizen, the officers will check for visas and the like. If they don’t have the right passport or visa, they’ll get sent back to Poland. Exceptions are made for “vulnerable people,” such as pregnant women.

In the truck lane, traffic moved more slowly, a seemingly endless line of trucks waiting on the highway. Those lines of trucks are slowing down commerce on both sides of the border.

“It's a real blow to the idea of a single market,” said Nicholas Micinski, professor in the School of International Service at American University.

“The power of a single market is the movement of people and goods across borders makes for a stronger economy,” he said. “And all of that slows down when you have to check for passports, these random checks, and then also the lorries.”

The border checks are also expensive; German taxpayers paid almost $100 million for the checks in the first nine months alone. There are 300 officers working at this one crossing, and others are regularly brought in to help cover the shifts, which run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are nine other land crossings, and several airports where checks have been put in place.

Meanwhile, a lot fewer people have been crossing into Europe without proper documents lately, though it’s impossible to know if that’s because of the border checks or for other reasons.

Wilko Möller represents the far-right AfD party in the state of Brandenburg, which shares a border with Poland. He thinks the checks are critical because of so many asylum-seekers coming to Germany in recent years, fleeing conflicts in places like Syria and Iraq.

“There’s not enough housing or doctors or schools,” he said. “That’s why we’ve said that we need border controls.”

Germany isn’t the only European country to impose border controls recently. Austria, Poland, and Italy are among those that have put them in place.

EU law says that any internal border controls are supposed to be temporary. But in August, Germany announced it will extend the controls once again, leaving them in place until next spring.