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By William Watson

Let me get this straight. If you show up at a Canada Border Services Agency post on the world’s longest undefended border and ask to come in as a refugee, we say: “No, you’re already in the U.S. Apply in the U.S. It’s a civilized place with which we have an agreement on these matters.” But if you then go to one of the thousands of truly undefended parts of the border and cross over illegally, we arrest and detain you but then do allow you to apply for refugee status. In other words, ring the doorbell and we won’t let you in, but come in through the bathroom window and you’ll find dinner and your room waiting for you. And that’s true even if the formerly undefended bits now actually are defended, in the sense that the RCMP has set up a booth and tents to observe and process your entry, which they arrest you for but don’t try to prevent.

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Comparing our immigration laws with what the Trump administration has just proposed, several U.S. newspapers made very complimentary comments about our system. None mentioned this bizarro loophole, which apparently stems from court cases that say that anyone on Canadian soil, if only for 10 seconds, has Charter rights. This is a laudable principle. But maybe we need an economist on the Supreme Court to instruct all his or her lawyer-colleagues on how humans respond to incentives. If you close all the doors but leave a window open with only mild penalties for using it, guess what? People use the window.