A migrant hops a fence in Coquelles near Calais, France, on August 4.Francois Lo Presti/AFP / Getty Images
Difficult problems are seldom easily reduced to binary options. But sometimes a prescription is so spectacularly wrong-headed it can quickly be separated from the right-way-of-doing-things camp. Take British Prime Minister David Cameron's solution to the growing migrant crisis in Europe: dogs and fences.
The United Kingdom, like the other governments of Western Europe, is wrestling with what to do about the job-hungry thousands massing at its borders. More and more migrants are trying to reach the U.K. from northern France, where they currently live in the dismal conditions of a sprawling refugee camp near Calais that's grimly been dubbed The Jungle. Most are from Africa, part of a mass exodus that has had a destabilizing effect on European Union nations, notably Italy.
Mr. Cameron's approach – dispatch sniffer dogs and taller barriers to the French end of the Channel Tunnel – may strike the correct populist notes, but it's ill-conceived and likely doomed to fail.
Large-scale migrations are as old as humanity itself, and the flow of people in search of betterment will not ebb, no matter how many police or snarling canines are in the way. And if they can't reach the U.K., they will remain where they already are – in continental Europe.
Mr. Cameron and his fellow European leaders, most of whose countries benefit from large-scale legal immigration, including refugees, need to get together for a serious discussion of how to deal with the influx. That will only work if everyone agrees to do their part (speaking of which, it's about time Canada did more to take in some of the millions of displaced Syrians). The migrant crisis is testing the very idea of the European Union – which is supposed to be about the free movement of people and goods.
No one is arguing every migrant deserves the right to move without hindrance to the country of his or her choosing. But simply closing borders and cracking down is not going to work. And in any case, the border under discussion isn't the EU's. It's simply one corner of Europe – Britain – trying to wall itself off from the problems of the rest. It probably won't work for the U.K. It certainly won't work for the EU or its illegal migrants.