Now, I expect that the vast majority of Sarnians won't be affected by this. People who live in Sarnia are almost all Canadian citizens.
Being a Canadian citizen doesn't mean "no border hassles". A friend of mine is Syrian by birth, but a Canadian citizen (lived here since early childhood). Not only that, but she is a government of Canada employee and has a special passport, (somewhere between a diplomatic passport and a regular passport - it means you are a representative of our government travelling on official business) as well as having been through Canadian security clearances for her job.
Going to Europe she has no problems, but going to the States she has consistently been delayed and pulled aside for hours because she was born in Syria. After the first occasion she thought that now that she had been thoroughly questioned and let in she would be in the system and the next time they would see that they had already done the questioning, but the 2nd time she was delayed even longer. She asked after that about trying to arrange pre-clearance of some sort the next time she has an american conference, but apparently there is no such option, and going to the US will just mean lengthy repetitive border delays.
She chooses to let her co-workers go to the American conferences now, and I don't blame her. There should be a system in place for being able to pre-arrange travel clearances/approvals, and the "going to the US as a direct representative of Canada" should mean alot more then the "being a toddler in Syria". It does when she goes to Europe; she gets a warm welcome there.
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Being a Canadian citizen doesn't mean "no border hassles". A friend of mine is Syrian by birth, but a Canadian citizen (lived here since early childhood). Not only that, but she is a government of Canada employee and has a special passport, (somewhere between a diplomatic passport and a regular passport - it means you are a representative of our government travelling on official business) as well as having been through Canadian security clearances for her job.
Going to Europe she has no problems, but going to the States she has consistently been delayed and pulled aside for hours because she was born in Syria. After the first occasion she thought that now that she had been thoroughly questioned and let in she would be in the system and the next time they would see that they had already done the questioning, but the 2nd time she was delayed even longer. She asked after that about trying to arrange pre-clearance of some sort the next time she has an american conference, but apparently there is no such option, and going to the US will just mean lengthy repetitive border delays.
She chooses to let her co-workers go to the American conferences now, and I don't blame her. There should be a system in place for being able to pre-arrange travel clearances/approvals, and the "going to the US as a direct representative of Canada" should mean alot more then the "being a toddler in Syria". It does when she goes to Europe; she gets a warm welcome there.