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The lack of interest on the part of the federal government to solve this problem is alarming. Trudeau basically just sent Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen to Miami to ask Haitians living there to kindly not come north and that’s been the extent of his efforts to dissuade them.

There’s also Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel’s recommendation to declare the whole border an official port of entry, which would mean people could no longer seek asylum regardless of where they cross into Canada. So far, the government hasn’t budged on this.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has himself been blamed for this whole mess, with his #WelcomeToCanada hashtag activism from early 2017 that signalled Canada has open borders. Government documents obtained by Postmedia confirmed this caused serious headaches for Canadian departments.

This shows that symbolism matters. Refugees came because they were given the impression they should come. And when you look at how comfortable and easy we’ve made the Roxham Rd. crossing, can you blame them?

Let’s try a little experiment then. Let’s reverse those visual cues. Get rid of the trailers and tents. Then, build a wall or more likely a fence that connects the Hemmingford crossing with the Lacolle one.

That’s a stretch about 10 kilometres long. We can take it down in a couple of years once this all calms down.

One Conservative politician told me they were reluctant to advocate for this because asylum seekers would just cross at a different location. Maybe. Maybe not.

At least it would send a firm signal about illegal immigration into this country.

When I floated this idea to a senior Liberal strategist the other day he shrugged in agreement and said it made sense. That’s the funny thing. The Liberals could get away with this politically much easier than the Conservatives.

The big question is do they even want to do something about this problem? Trudeau’s troublesome tweet is still up. People are still retweeting it and engaging with it. Right now, the open door symbolism still stands.

Twitter: @anthonyfurey

afurey@postmedia.com