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That does not relieve us of the need to address what seems likely to grow into a considerable problem, if not a crisis. We Canadians have been congratulating ourselves at our greater tolerance as we watch Europe struggling with the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, or the United States with the accumulated backlog of millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and points south.

But the truth is that much of our vaunted tolerance is the result of our circumstances: thousands of miles from anywhere, protected on three sides by oceans, with a climate cold enough to put off all but the most persevering and, crucially, a stable, prosperous, immigrant-welcoming country to our south. As such, we have been in the enviable position of being able to decide both how many immigrants and refugees to let in, and which ones.

But now it appears America, for the next while at least, will be not so stable, or so prosperous, and certainly not so welcoming as it has been in the past. The Trump administration having vowed, not only to admit no more refugees for the next several months, but to deport much of the country’s existing undocumented population, we may soon find quite unmanageable numbers arriving on our own doorstep. If this many people are desperate enough to walk this far to cross in February, at the risk of frostbite and worse, how many will come by June?

The first easy answer is to do nothing. We can certainly take in greater numbers of people than we have been, but even the most open border must be a regulated one. We have a right to know who is entering, and particularly whether they represent any kind of threat: it is not to tar all immigrants and refugees as a danger to say that some may be.