Keller: I’m not crazy about the Trump administration either, but we have to work with them on the border

Reality:

…Mr. Trump’s nominated “border czar,” Tom Homan, is originally from upstate New York and wants to resolve this issue. Ottawa should be eager to help.

Canada will always have an immigration policy that is different from the U.S., independent of it and (hopefully) a lot smarter. We will decide how many immigrants to accept, and how they are chosen. But on border integrity, a precondition of national sovereignty, Washington and Ottawa should be aligned, regardless of who’s in the White House.

Both countries want to limit the number of people arriving and staying without invitation or legal justification. And Canada badly wants refugee claims decided in the first country of arrival.

On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that when it comes to border security, “there is no daylight at all between the goals of our two countries.” Ottawa needs to keep saying that.

Roxham Road is closed because of the expanded Safe Third Country Agreement, under which someone who comes to Canada from the U.S. to make a refugee claim can generally be returned to the U.S., for their claim to be decided there. That’s also what the U.S. wants Mexico to agree to, and Canada should share that goal. It’s profoundly in our national interest for the Trump administration to embrace and honour this principle.

Canada is not ready for a refugee crisis, because we’re already in one. More than 132,000 refugee claims were made in the first nine months of this year. Many are people on tourist visas who filed their claim after they got off the plane; others are visa students. The numbers have been steadily growing. In 2019, there were 62,000 claims. Between 2011 and 2016, the annual average was just 18,250….

Source: I’m not crazy about the Trump administration either, but we have to work with them on the border