I watched a video on what Denmark is doing with regards to immigration and they are getting called racists etc.
The Danish concern is that they are a socialist country but their economics don't allow for massive numbers of newcomers that are untrained and culturally different.
Canada is different in that only 5% are native where in Scandinavia the culture is more deeply rooted, making comparisons difficult.
Think of it as the family home and a family member has to come back due to circumstances. They grew up in the place and know the rules, expectations and patterns.
The best way to handle the problem is to help the potential immigrants fix the problems back home. That gets us involved in world politics but how do we help if we can't fix our petty bike lane issues here.
Denmark (and much of Europe generally) definitely has different challenges in regards to protecting what are much more established and homogenous cultural norms. Northern European countries especially have a social structure that only works if the vast majority participate in good faith. If you have a new population with some who approach interaction with government with a mentality of take what you can get, things fall apart fast. This is absolutely not to say that that's in any way typical of their immigrants, but it doesn't take many to create serious issues.
Having spent a good bit of time in Italy, I can at least understand the fear that Italians have when faced with the tidal wave of African migrants. The sheer volume is enough that it is natural to worry about being overwhelmed. As you say, though, the key is finding ways to make things in Africa not so awful that people will risk death to leave. The west has massively pulled back on foreign aid since the end of the cold war, and this is the result. Europe especially has been very insular and comfortable (look how little aid they can/want to offer to Ukraine), and is now facing some uncomfortable truths.
I think the Canadian problem is different, though. Our geography means we face fewer undocumented migrants (though this could quickly become a crisis if Trump follows through his threat to deport 11M people when he regains the presidency). It's more a case of managing those who we invite in. As for who and where, the racism card will get played by whomever gains by playing.
When people started to try and do some digging into the Vancouver real estate crisis, there was so little data about purchasers that the only approach was to look at names and employment status of purchasers. When this revealed a huge proportion of million dollar plus homes being purchased by housewives and students with Chinese names, any rational discussion about what that meant was shouted down as racist by a very well organised lobby. It paralysed any approach to even figuring out what the cause of the problem is, let alone finding a solution.
The problem here is not that individual populations are inherently less positive than others. There is nothing about somebody from India or China that makes them less suitable as an immigrant than somebody from Angola, Ireland or Kazakhstan. But when you have such massive immigration from a single country, it inherently creates issues with assimilation. I think while we mostly appreciate the value of multiculturalism, we don't want to essentially establish colonies within our borders. The larger a block of immigrants comes from a single place, the slower they will blend into the rest of the existing population. To go back to Vancouver, 90+% of the immigrant population is from two countries. That's not multiculturalism, and it shows. There are people with a need for opportunities, safety, and a place to raise their families from all over the world. I'd prefer to spread those opportunities around, and make a conscious effort to do so.
