Roads severed at the US-Canada border

[corco]

Oddly, I've always had much better luck with CBP than CBSA. I get secondaried pretty often going into Canada, ranging from me just sitting in the office real quick while they run a more detailed warrant check or something to having to empty my pockets and surrender my laptop for search. Of about 10 times crossing into Canada since I've gone to college, I think I've not been secondaried twice. Once I was going to a concert in Vancouver and had the ticket and it was very clear why I was going. The other time was a cross country roadtrip, and crossing from Michigan to use 401 to get to northern New Hampshire was a pretty reasonable excuse.

I've only been secondaried once re-entering the USA- on the trip I just mentioned from Quebec into Vermont at about 2 AM in 2007, and they were certain we were smuggling alcohol (we were all 18). Even then it was just a quick search of the coolers we had (cross country road trip) and the guy was amused we had good bottled Root Beer from Wisconsin on us.

The last three times I've re-entered the US, I've been waved through in less than a minute by friendly border guards.

If they're sharing transcripts, that makes sense- the USA sees "Canada checked this guy out good, he's not a risk" and my story lines up, so that's good. For whatever reason I'm always more confident at re-entry anyway. It's easier for me to say what I did out of the country than what I'm going to do, and I keep all my receipts in Canada anyway just so they can see where I've traveled and what I've done if they are interested, but I've never had to show them.

That being said, Canada is usually polite. When I crossed last year and was subject to a laptop search (I was nervous at the border and gave them route numbers for my drive, which they straight up told me was sketchy), the guy finally said "you're just a guy who likes road trips, aren't you?" and I said "yes" and he gave me my passport back. As he walked away, he said "now you have a story!"

I crossed in 2008 heading to Vancouver though where my car was searched and I had to empty my pockets and got the American-style "where's the drugs? just tell me where they are and it'll be okay" routine. That was my only rude encounter with CBSA.

[catch22]

I've had a couple of interesting encounters with border crossings in both directions.  In general Canadian officials have been more friendly than US.

Once my father in law nearly got us pulled over coming back into the US for replying "Nothing but memories" when asked what we were bringing back with us. 

The most interesting was when we decided spur of the moment to cross to Sarnia.  The guard wanted our kids' birth certificates.  He said he was protecting us, that we'd appreciate it if someone was trying to steal our kids.  Then my wife remembered she happened to still have my daughter's birth cert in her purse from registering my daughter at school.  He looked at it, and wanted to know which kid it was for.  Err, the girl, who looks to be much closer to 5 years old than 2?

Only later did I think of a great comeback.  Just try to separate our boys from us, and they'd have screamed bloody murder!

This is funny in retrospect, but not funny at the time.  Back in the early 1990s I worked in downtown Detroit.  One night, 3 of my work buddies and I decided to go over to Windsor and check out the, uh, "adult entertainment."  Returning to Detroit via the tunnel, we pulled up to the customs inspection.  First question is the usual, "What county are you a citizen of?"  To which my friend Bert, who was the driver, replied with a perfectly deadpan face, "Cuba."

My first thought was, "We're all going to the slammer."  But then, the customs guy gets this funny look on his face, peeks into the car at the rest of us, and says, "All of you?"  Bert, it turned out, had emigrated to the U.S as a child along with his family shortly after the revolution.  But none of us knew that then.  He had a yellow resident alien card that had "POLITICAL ASYLUM" in big letters on it. As soon as the agent saw that, he was all smiles and chatted with Bert for a couple of minutes about the state of Cuban affairs.  Then he said to the rest of us, "I'm going to assume you guys aren't Cuban," laughed and waved us by.

[agentsteel53]

And they can remember verbatim what you said for longer than it takes for the next car to pull up to the booth?

that's why there's always that short delay, is my guess.  how long does it take for them to type 'in Canada for 4 days, visiting family in Toronto, WAS DARK-SKINNED SO GIVE HIM GRIEF ON HIS RETURN TO USA'.

[Arkansastravelguy]

My visit to Canadian customs on I-87 was very pleasant. The officer was friendly and welcomed me and asked if I knew French well enough to read the signs (I'm fluent reading French). The US border patrol was a complete ass. Gave me hell because I was born in Oklahoma and had a North Carolina license. I guess we have to live where we were born? 60 seconds leaving the us, 45 minutes to get back in.


iPhone

[Pete from Boston]

My visit to Canadian customs on I-87 was very pleasant. The officer was friendly and welcomed me and asked if I knew French well enough to read the signs (I'm fluent reading French). The US border patrol was a complete ass. Gave me hell because I was born in Oklahoma and had a North Carolina license. I guess we have to live where we were born? 60 seconds leaving the us, 45 minutes to get back in.

I was once living in Mass., crossing the border with someone from NJ, in her NJ-registered car.  We were departing from Mass.  This was enough to get the US Customs agent really annoyed.

I swear, sometimes you'd think every day was their first. 

[corco]

My visit to Canadian customs on I-87 was very pleasant. The officer was friendly and welcomed me and asked if I knew French well enough to read the signs (I'm fluent reading French). The US border patrol was a complete ass. Gave me hell because I was born in Oklahoma and had a North Carolina license. I guess we have to live where we were born? 60 seconds leaving the us, 45 minutes to get back in.

I was once living in Mass., crossing the border with someone from NJ, in her NJ-registered car.  We were departing from Mass.  This was enough to get the US Customs agent really annoyed.

I swear, sometimes you'd think every day was their first. 

I drove into Canada from Montana while I was living in Montana in a rental car with Washington plates once. That blew both CBSA's and CBP's minds. I had a hunch that might be a problem when I picked it up in Great Falls and almost went back in to ask for another car but decided that was stupid. In hindsight, I should have. CBP even said "If you rented it in Montana and you live in Montana, why does it have Washington plates?"