Going to Canada? Check Your Past
February 24th, 2007Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
There was a time not long ago when a trip across the border from the United States to Canada was accomplished with a wink and a wave of a driver’s license. Those days are over.
Take the case of 55-year-old Lake Tahoe resident Greg Felsch. Stopped at the border in Vancouver this month at the start of a planned five-day ski trip, he was sent back to the United States because of a DUI conviction seven years ago. Not that he had any idea what was going on when he was told at customs: “Your next stop is immigration.”
Felsch was ushered into a room. “There must have been 75 people in line,” he says. “We were there for three hours. One woman was in tears. A guy was sent back for having a medical marijuana card. I felt like a felon with an ankle bracelet.”
Or ask the well-to-do East Bay couple who flew to British Columbia this month for an eight-day ski vacation at the famed Whistler Chateau, where rooms run to $500 a night. They’d made the trip many times, but were surprised at the border to be told that the husband would have to report to “secondary” immigration.
There, in a room he estimates was filled with 60 other concerned travelers, he was told he was “a person who was inadmissible to Canada.” The problem? A conviction for marijuana possession.
In 1975.
Welcome to the new world of border security. Unsuspecting Americans are turning up at the Canadian border expecting clear sailing, only to find that their past — sometimes their distant past — is suddenly an issue.
While Canada officially has barred travelers convicted of criminal offenses for years, attorneys say post-9/11 information-gathering, combined with a sweeping agreement between Canada and the United States to share data, has resulted in a spike in phone calls from concerned travelers.
They are shocked to hear that the sins of their youth might keep them out of Canada. But what they don’t know is that this is just the beginning. Soon other nations will be able to look into your past when you want to travel there.
Related: Staying Off the “Electronic Plantation”
What the hell!? Is this a measure by Canada to keep ‘bad apples’ out or was there a deal made with the U.S. to keep Americans IN? I’m once again flashing back to that Star Trek episode … ‘we’ve deciphered the rest of the book, How To Serve Man, it’s a cook book!’
Time to rethink that border fence to the south?
Time to take up sailing lessons!
Every week some new Orwellian crap is thrust upon travellers. I was held up at security in Belfast on a trip to London for the horrific offence of not putting a tube of toothpaste into the regulation clear plastic bag, and for carrying a bottle of shampoo of 250ml instead of the permitted maximum of 100 ml. I was also frisked in what amounted to a sexual assault by a puny security man. Then we arrived at Gatwick everyone – not just the terror suspect (me) – had our photographs taken when we presented our ID, something that I had somehow not been led to anticipate.
Nevertheless, for all their paranoia, I was able to bring what amounted to the components of a very nasty cudgel on to the plane without anyone in security realising what could be done with the combined parts. Just as long as the Shampoo of Death didn’t get on, they seemed happy enough.
I’m not putting myself through airport fascism again if I can avoid it. We’re heading off to the Alps next weekend but I’ve decided we’ll take ferries and just drive down. At least the ferry terminals are still low key and laid back, and European borders are still (mostly) almost unnoticeable for travellers by road. I might as well take advantage of it while it lasts, as no doubt that too will change in the near future in the unending war on liberty.
Just one more reason, atop a vast mountain of earlier reasons, to vacate the premises at your earliesst convenience.
(Full disclosure: this Seattle boy and Cryptogon reader departed Fortress America — permanently — in 2002.)
Let’s also not forget that as of 17 January, legally speaking, all US citizens need “official” permission to leave and/or return. Wait ’til they start strictly enforcing THAT one.
Tsoldrin, I’d forgotten about that little Star Trek detail. Roddenberry cribbed the cookbook idea directly from C.S. Lewis and the evil giants of Harfang…
cryingfreeman,
They photographed all of you??? Are other European countries doing this?
Things are getting seriously weird now. The pace is picking up on this nonsense.
Kevin
Kevin, I don’t yet know if other European nations are doing this, but others have commented that’s it’s been the case at Gatwick for a few years now. And yes, they photographed all of us when we were asked to present our boarding pass stubs AFTER we left the plane – they made me and my wife pose together for a picture. All we had by way of preparation was an almost afterthought of an announcement from the cabin crew when we landed, to the effect that all flights entering and leaving London Gatwick require this now. Both international and domestic flights are subjected to this, ostensibly to allow both kinds of passenger to pass through the same secure areas.
The logic might be to prevent a domestic passenger swapping boarding passes for outgoing flights with a foreign passenger in the terminal, however that still feels like a bogus explanation given that photographic IDs can be (and often are) readily checked in the queue to board the plane and besides, why do it for incoming passengers and then collect their stubs before they reach anywhere accessible by international travellers? It just looks like an excuse to gather quality photographs of travellers into and out of the airport.
Star Trek, Twilight Zone, what’s the difference?
Kevin: regarding the photograph I am sure this is not common practice in Europe. I had several incidents on airports already when travelling in Europe, including a positive test on nitro-glycerin traces on one of my laptops (that funnily just ended with a second negative test and me leaving without any further questioning on my way to the US), but never had to give out my picture or any further details. I will be in London at the end of the week, havent been in the UK for a couple of years, so I will watch out for weird action. Guess with them in a leading position in the global paranoia race, some extra features there might show up.
But getting back to the article, I am wondering how this fits into decriminalization of marijuana users in Canada at the moment and in the last couple of years. As with most regulations, I guess the bordercheck process is handled by some oter entity that is not necessarily in touch with those that are working on relaxing laws on marijuana. Perfect example of the left not knowing what the right is doing, and lack of end-to-end process control.
souls,
i’m sure you recognize the difference between active laws and working towards them. as a canadian, i know there has been some effort to that effect but it is far from over and certainly not the case as it legally stands now. i would be willing to bet that a rather complicated and ‘comphrehensive’ border security agreement is in place that simply flags ALL previous criminal history and disallows entry. this has been the case for canadians crossing the border into the u.s. for years if not decades where the smallest infraction will disallow you entry to the u.s. it simply appears the border is running with the same book on both sides now.
it does make me wonder though at the future and furthered limitations on travel for anyone with a ‘criminal’ history, whatever that may be (think ‘raging grannies’ a group of senior citizens dedicated to social ills for the most part and identified as a potential terrorist organization by canadian and american authorities), rfid technology, and local city state borders. wait until you can’t leave your city or town because you’ve been ‘flagged’.
Here’s a funny one for you all: We’ve had a huge man-hunt for two escaped convicts here in north-central Montana this week. They escaped from a facility in Wyoming. Guess where they found them? They were able to cross the border into Canada!! Yep, homeland security is one successful bureaucracy!
Get used to it guys – you started it
>>>It just looks like an excuse to gather quality photographs of travellers into and out of the airport.
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Wait for the DNA swabs!
The American Reich has things in store that would make Hitler’s SS and Gestapo look like child’s play by comparison.