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As someone with direct experience of the Canadian immigration system, this is not inherent to a points-based system: it's a product of deliberate choices, mostly by Trudeau.
The fraud problem, for example, became exponentially worse after COVID.
And a lot of this could be easily solved by things like a country cap. It's not that difficult to make it harder to coordinate fraud.
Yeah, I know, but the problem is that the population want to limit migration but they never want to have to be the meanies who say "no" to people, especially sympathetic cases (real international students who integrate, equivalents to america's H1Bs who are really filling unresolved gaps in the job market that locals cannot fill, genuine refugees from wartorn areas...) So a points system seem like a good solution because it takes the decision out of their hands but on its own, it isn't all encompassing, and unless you're also willing to say "no" to people in those alternative pathways, immigration will simply route around the points system into those pathways.
I don't think the population is the biggest problem here, though I grant that once the ratchet has been turned they're too squeamish (or easily distracted, thanks to Trump) about turning it back. If anything I think the complacency is a result of a belief that the immigration system is mostly sensible, and people don't want drama about it like they have down south (people also always underestimate how many migrants come in, though they felt it post-COVID).
It's clear that the ruining of the immigration system was a result of Liberal ideology and business lobbying post-COVID. Carney just baldly stated that he cannot do what the public is asking for and end temporary migrants because business is very concerned about losing that spigot.
I don't really think there's an easy political solution to the fact that businesses want cheap labour and are able to lobby Ottawa to get it, especially given the Liberals' entrenched power. There are benefits to being a vetocracy with neither party being able to dominate like in the US. Theoretically you could remove some programs and put everything under a points-based system but the next Parliament (likely Liberal) can just undo it at will.
There's some argument that the Liberals figured it was money on the ground and they would get to slam the CPC for being racist and maybe they've learned their lesson. I don't buy it though. I think you have to do to parties what happened to the UK Tories before people learn. The lesson here is that they destroyed the reputation of an immigration system that was well-regarded enough that Trump made noises about adopting it in 2016 and they had a couple of years of anxiety and then got right back to governing.
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The problem, as usual, is bad-faith people. People who game the H-1B system... but more importantly, officials who don't stop it. Or immigration judges who rubber-stamp asylum claims. Points systems would be gamed by such people also, as Tanista suggests occurred in Canada. In the presence of such shameless bad faith, no pragmatic solution is possible. For example, if I were a good-faith pro-immigration person, and I wanted to win over good-faith anti-immigration people, I certainly would not object to the ending of a temporary asylum program with "temporary" in its very name, when the reason it was instituted is no longer in place; it would prove bad faith and would make it hard to get such temporary programs authorized in the future, assuming the anti-side was still around. Yet that's what happens. So it's all irreconcilable conflict theory, war to the knife.
Yeah any system will be gamed relentlessly by those who want to participate in Western economies. The court system ensures that the pressure from marginal outliers en masse erodes whatever reasonable original point, especially when combined with activist judges
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