These stories keep cropping up in the news often enough that this must be more than a few isolated incidents. We’re talking about part of the Trump Phenomenon as it relates to illegal aliens and their desire to flee the country now that the new administration is in charge. The closest and apparently most attractive destination is Canada, and our rather dubious border control of that much land makes the chore relatively easy. We previously learned about a steady flow of illegals emigrating to the Great White North by way of Pembina, North Dakota. (Though it turns out many of them aren’t faring much better up there either.) But now there’s a new border jumping hot spot.

Up in the northeast corner of New York State is the unincorporated village of Champlain, appropriately named since it sits near the northern end of Lake Champlain. (Also not terribly far from where I go fishing every summer.) At the north end of the village there is a dead end street named Roxham Road. Beyond the dead end there is a path through the woods which brings you to the Canadian border after a relatively short walk. And that little street is attracting visitors from across the nation in droves. (Associated Press)

Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, migrants who came to the U.S. from across the globe — Syria, Congo, Haiti, elsewhere — arrive here where Roxham Road dead-ends so they can walk into Canada, hoping its policies will give them the security they believe the political climate in the United States does not. “In Trump’s country, they want to put us back to our country,” said Lena Gunja, a 10-year-old from Congo, who until this week had been living in Portland, Maine. She was traveling with her mother, father and younger sister. “So we don’t want that to happen to us, so we want a good life for us. My mother, she wants a good life for us.” The passage has become so crowded this summer that Canadian police set up a reception center on their side of the border in the Quebec community of Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Montreal, or almost 300 miles (480 kilometers) north of New York City.

Leave it to the Canadians and their legendary niceness. They’ve put up a group of tents out there in the woods to “arrest” the illegal aliens, accept their plea for refugee status, feed them and ship them off to a holding facility in the nearest town. According to local reporting, back on our side of the border the Border Patrol has come by once in a while and arrested a couple of people, but for the most part they can’t be bothered. And why should they? The article quotes Border Patrol special operations supervisor Brad Brant as saying, “our mission isn’t to prevent people from leaving.”

Exactly. Illegal immigrants are a serious problem, but… illegal emigrants? Most of the ones the AP reporters spoke to were from Haiti and they were in the United States illegally to begin with. Should we really care if they’ve decided to leave and become Canada’s problem? Why on Earth would we make any effort along those lines unless we know one of them is a dangerous criminal who Canada should be made aware of and arrest?

Now that I stop and think about it, perhaps some of that DoJ and Homeland Security grant money that’s not going to the sanctuary cities anymore could be put to a new use. Bus tickets! Any illegals who truly wish to do so could get a free bus ride to Champlain, being dropped off within easy strolling distance of the unofficial crossing. It’s got to be cheaper than keeping them in jail for weeks on end.