Saunders: Canada’s border is broken, but not the way Trump thinks. Here’s how the next government can fix it

Good long and thoughtful commentary:

…There has to be a sensible Canadian space between Trumpist mass deportations and closed borders on one hand, and on the other the current reality of a set of policies and institutions that make Canadian governments unable to control who enters the country.

Luckily, there seems to be an awkward political consensus around this. Both the federal Conservatives and the major Liberal leadership candidates appear to be united (though they might not admit it) around a common set of aspirations: a return to a focus on permanent, citizenship-focused immigration of intact families and a reduction of temporary migration to a minimum; immigration targets tied to economic conditions and population-growth needs; a refugee policy driven by genuine humanitarian need and not by irregular border crossings or opportunism.

Those goals won’t easily be attained with mere tinkering of the sort that governments this century have engaged in. Rather, they require a set of systemwide reforms. After interviewing a dozen former immigration officials and experts, I found a strong consensus on the changes that would make the system work:…

Source: Canada’s border is broken, but not the way Trump thinks. Here’s how the next government can fix it