It really is amazing how conservative regular people start sounding the moment illegal immigration has an impact on their neighborhood. That’s true of the mayor of New York City but it’s even true of our usually sedate and progressive neighbors to the north in Canada. Kudos to the woman highlighted in this NY Times story for at least having some self-awareness about the situation.

Hélène Gravel’s house sits on Roxham Road near Canada’s most famous illegal border crossing, used by migrants leaving the United States to seek asylum up north. She has watched with increasing frustration as a bitter winter has failed to stanch record inflows and as New York City even began buying bus tickets for migrants headed her way.

“There’s no political will to fix this,’’ Ms. Gravel, 77, said in her driveway, a stone’s throw from the border.

“Canada is soft,’’ she said, adding that asylum-seekers should be processed at official border crossings. “And the United States doesn’t care because this is nothing compared with what’s happening on their southern border.”

In case you missed it, that story about Mayor Adams giving migrants bus tickets to Canada is absolutely real and also should absolutely be the last word on complaints about Republican governors busing and flying migrants north. Gov. Abbott started busing migrants to NYC last August and by the start of this month he was giving away free bus tickets to Canada. So it only takes six months of dealing with this problem before you’re out of room, out of patience and ready to share the pain. Six months to go from welcome to our sanctuary city to here’s your hat, what’s your hurry. Now it’s Canada’s turn to learn the same lesson.

Shielded by geography, strict immigration policies favoring the educated and skilled, and its single border with the United States, Canada is now being forced to deal with an issue that has long bedeviled other wealthy Western nations: mass illegal border crossings by land…

At Roxham Road, migrants are warned by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers that they will be arrested and charged with unlawfully entering Canada.

But once charged, they are quickly released.

Usually after a few months, they can start working and receiving health care and other social benefits in Canada while their applications are processed. Many migrants are sheltered at government-paid hotels for extended periods, and children are enrolled in public schools.

It sounds a lot like the treatment they get when they enter the United States. Some harsh words about not crossing followed by a veritable red carpet and a quick path to going wherever they want and staying as long as they feel like it. It’s a giant super magnet for economic migrants which, thanks to the bipartisan busing effort, is now extending all the way to Canada. About 40,000 crossed the border illegally last year. This year the number is up to 5,000 a month, on pace for a 50% increase. Suddenly, all of the progressives in charge are talking tough.

Mr. Trudeau, who has spoken loftily about welcoming refugees in the past, has toughened his stance recently by stating explicitly that the federal government is working on renegotiating the treaty and will raise the issue when he meets with Mr. Biden. His shift in tone comes as the Biden administration announced a renewed crackdown on migrants crossing illegally into the United States.

I have to wonder if doubling the number of buses directly to Canada for about six months wouldn’t turn Justin Trudeau into Greg Abbott of the north. It really does clarify things to see the people scolding everyone about xenophobia suddenly realize it’s their problem to manage. Meanwhile, the people asking for a fix to the broken immigration system are usually those who are being overwhelmed by the sheer number of people arriving.

To be clear, I’m pretty sympathetic to a lot of these migrants. They are usually fleeing an economic mess back home that is not of their own making (think about the migrants fleeing Cuba or Venezuela, for instance). Many of them are thinking about their kids and wanting to give them a better life, which as a parent I can sympathize with. If I’d been born there instead of here, I’d want to migrate too. The fact that they come here to the US should make us proud. The American dream is still very real for many of these people, maybe more than it is for a lot of privileged progressives who were born here and who seem to have very little good to say about it.

So I’m not really against these people in any personal sense. They’re right to think it’s better here because it is. But that doesn’t mean we should let 2 million migrants a year game the asylum system and continue doing so year after year. As in almost all things, order is better than chaos. But right now order is hanging on by its fingernails. Canada truly has no idea at this point. When they start seeing 200,000 illegal migrants a year attitudes will really start to change.

Update: A solid comment on this story from a Canadian reader in Toronto.

My fellow Canadians have always held a superior attitude towards the US’s immigration policy because we controlled the quality and quantity of immigrants and refugees coming in. We never had to contend with masses of people arriving at any of our borders for obvious reasons. Now we’ll see how generous we Canadians really are when we have masses of asylum seekers pouring in – my feeling is that we’ll quickly shut up about criticizing the US and what it has had to face.

I live in the Greater Toronto Area which has some of the highest housing costs in all of North America (2nd highest in Canada) which is where no doubt many of these people will be heading and we already have a substantial homelessness problem.

And some advice to the political left – if you want Canada’s politics and attitudes to make a hard right turn – please continue to advocate for asylum for these masses of people because, that’s what will happen. It’ll happen gradually but it will happen as in every western democracy with uncontrolled migration.

He’s right from start to finish.