by Simonne Liberty

Created on: August 19, 2009   Last Updated: August 20, 2009

The United States has always been more divided than united. Each state has its own laws. If you move to a different state you need to obtain another drivers license for that state. If you are in a professional field like being a Nurse, you have to take a state board exam for that state. If a person commits a crime in one state and crosses state lines, suddenly it becomes a federal offense. It is as if they have crossed another Country.

We are not restricted from traveling or moving from one state to another, but when law officials decide what is crime according to the state they are in, we have to go along with it. If a parent who does not have custody of their children, and takes them across state lines, it turns into a federal offense, and punishments are far worse than if the parent had stayed in the same state, from where they took the children.

It is all crazy and confusing. Each State has its own laws. Therefore how can they be united? If we are the "United" States of America, why are there so many different rules and laws for each individual state? When a person on social security moves to another state, there social security checks will simply be transfered. But their health insurance and food stamps will be cut off from the state they left from, and they have to re-apply for the services in the new state they moved to. They have to go through the entire process all over again.

This process can take weeks to complete. A person who needs medications, can die while waiting for the new insurance to kick in. They end up going to emergency rooms because, they can't afford to pay the cost of the medications.

Africa is a huge continent. They claim all the divided sections as individual countries. Only in America is this so complicated. The state and federal governments are separate, yet they are part of each other. We have federal prisons, and state prisons. The federal agencies trump the state agencies. State and federal law officials are in conflict with each other. They hold back information from each other to control a situation.

When the police are in pursuit of a criminal, they must stop at the state line, and let the police from the next state take over. That all sounds more like "The divided states of America." Would the US be better off as divided states? That is a weird question, because we ALREADY are!

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