alt Hacker NewsI lived in Australia for a year during COVID. It's surrounded by water and doesn't have thousand-mile long borders to any country. Controlling entry is not the same logistical problem as controlling entry to the US.
That said, a lot of US's immigration problems has been neglect to enforce immigration law, deliberate sabotaging of legislation throughout the years, and multiple broad amnesty decrees that basically broke the system. The system is broken by design and almost tailor-made to foment anti-immigrant sentiment that has sparked this new, ugly phase driven by unaccountable maniacs.
It is, ironically, a situation where the best solution might very well be a lighter touch.
US immigration policy used to be simply... Less. You could pretty much come and go as you please along the southern border. So people did, and therefore there were simply fewer issues because folks didn't feel the need to "sneak in," not when getting in and out of the country was as easy as a day-pass. People would live in Mexico and work a job in a border city.
The tightening of the rules began in (if I recall correctly) the '80s, and with it the actual crisis; if you could come and go as you please, it was no issue to live in Mexico, but people, when forced to choose, stayed where the economic productivity was.