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Because of pro-immigration and pro-refugee advocacy, none of the national parties has had the interest or will to address this long-standing lacuna in Canadian border control.

Central to the current situation is the fact that Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. — the most recent attempt to address cross-border asylum-seeking — has been ineffective from the beginning.

In its first year of operation, 2005, out of 4,033 claims made at the border only 303 were deemed ineligible because of the STCA. Between 2007 and 2011, out of approximately 32,500 refugee claims made at land border points, only 3,260 — or about 10 per cent — could not exploit one of the highly questionable exemptions found in the STCA.

In terms of what should be done, and done quickly, Canada should unilaterally identify the U.S. as a “safe third country” to halt this irregular flow of asylum seekers. The obvious and long-standing template for the details of rules and regulations for an effective safe third country policy is the European Dublin Regulation which is the core migration management tool in Europe.

Reforms should include changes to the specifics of the exemptions so that our laws are consistent with the basic internationally accepted logic that an asylum seeker must claim protection at the first refuge granting safe country they reach.

Implementing such internationally accepted norms would stem the bulk of this flow.

But the problems don’t end at the border. Part of the reason for this influx is that the existing refugee determination process that is centred in the Immigration and Refugee Board is hopelessly backlogged and pretty much guarantees years of residency in Canada before there is some possibility of removal.