THE GROWING NUMBER OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WHO HAVE BEEN CROSSING THE BORDER FROM THE U.S. IS NOT A PROBLEM WE ARE GOING TO SOLVE, BUT MANAGE, BY A COMBINATION OF MEASURES, ANDREW COYNE WRITES.

Ifeel for Tony Clement. The Tory MP has been demanding the government “enforce the law” on the mounting numbers of asylum seekers who have been crossing the border from the United States, illegally, in recent weeks. But he found himself sputtering for air Tuesday when a CBC radio interviewer asked him what, specifically, he wanted the government to do, eventually hanging up in a snit.

It’s a good question, though: In what way are the police officers who have been arresting the wouldbe refugees as soon as they step on Canadian soil failing to enforce the law? The calls from Clement and other critics for a “crackdown” amount to a demand that illegal immigration should be made illegal, enforced by the arrest of all those who are currently being arrested.

But as I say I feel for Clement. Like him, I have no easy answers to this dilemma. Unlike him, however, I’m willing to admit it. The migration of peoples is one of the great motive forces of human history; when large numbers of people are determined to pick up and move somewhere, there isn’t a force in the world that can stop them.

That does not relieve us of the need to address what seems likely to grow into a considerable problem, if not a crisis. We Canadians have been congratulating ourselves at our greater tolerance as we watch Europe struggling with the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, or the United States with the accumulated backlog of millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and points south.

But the truth is that much of our vaunted tolerance is the result of our circumstances: thousands of miles from anywhere, protected on three sides by oceans, with a climate cold enough to put off all but the most persevering and, crucially, a stable, prosperous, immigrant-welcoming country to our south. As such, we have been in the enviable position of being able to decide both how many immigrants and refugees to let in, and which ones.

But now it appears America, for the next while at least, will be not so stable, or so prosperous, and certainly not to welcoming as it has been in the past. The Trump administration having vowed, not only to admit no more refugees for the next several months, but to deport much of the country’s existing undocumented population, we may soon find quite unmanageable numbers arriving on our own doorstep. If this many people are desperate enough to walk this far to cross in February, at the risk of frostbite and worse, how many will come by June?

The first easy answer is to do nothing. We can certainly take in greater numbers of people than we have been, but even the most open border must be a regulated one. We have a right to know who is entering, and particularly whether they represent any kind of threat: it is not to tar all immigrants and refugees as a danger to say that some may be.

The second, slightly better answer, as urged by the NDP, is to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, in force since 2005, under which refugee claimants applying for entry from the United States are automatically turned back at the border.

This was signed on the understanding that the US treatment of refugee claimants would be no worse than our own, or at least acceptable; if that is no longer the case, or if the perception that it is not is driving large numbers of people to flee the United States, there may be a case for a temporary suspension — to coin a phrase, until we can figure out what’s going on.

But it’s far from clear this would solve the problem. It might persuade the people now risking their lives to cross through the woods to go through the usual channels. But if they show up in anything like the numbers expected — and an advertisement that they would no longer be turned back amounts to an open invitation — the usual channels will be overwhelmed. In which case a good many will no doubt be driven back into the woods — they will not feel they have the luxury of waiting — to make the crossing illegally, even if this results, as now, in their arrest. If enough try, it won’t. That leaves … whatever it is the Tories are proposing. But what is that? The police are not empowered to arrest people until they are on Canadian soil — and the minute they do set foot, as asylumseekers, they have rights, including the right to a hearing to adjudicate their claim.

Perhaps you believe they should be sent back without a hearing. But that is not Canadian law, and given Supreme Court rulings on the matter is unlikely to become law.

And there is the little matter that in some cases this really would amount to condemning people to persecution, even death. A decent country does not do such things.

The easiest of all answers — build a wall — would not just be expensive folly, as in the U.S.-Mexico example: it isn’t even a practical possibility.

This is not a problem we are going to solve, but manage, by a combination of measures: by increasing our intake of immigrants and refugees; by adding more staff and resources to border control points; by prevailing upon the Americans, if we can, to preserve a humane and law-based immigration and refugee policy; and by turning back many of those who do apply, perhaps under a revised and extended Safe Third Country Agreement.