Going to Canada? Check your past

[kurth]

Going to Canada? Check your past
Tourists with minor criminal records turned back at border
C.W. Nevius
Friday, February 23, 2007

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...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/23/MNGCAO9NSB1.DTL

[Mend]

1. bush, cheney, the brat twins, laura's murder of boyfriend....

looks like our government and their families are not going seal hunting any time soon.

[Skink]

2. Canadian bastards. Try boarding a plane in Canada with an instrument.

they'll hunt you down before you even get in the door and make you pay.

[Benhurst]

3. Don't you just love that New World Order!

:loveya: :loveya: :loveya:

[Union Thug]

4. If this is the cost of security, I'll take my chances without the interrogation rooms

And I'm very serious about this. If people want to live their lives afraid of their own shadows - that's their problem and they alone should live with it. Please don't force everyone else in the world into your paranoid delusions and the authoritarian, Kafkaesque solutions you dream up as a result.