Bordering on Insanity

[bcholmes]

You can never go home again, Oatman... but I guess you can shop there.

-- Grosse Pointe Blank

I've often spoken, in the past, about the little ways in which my experience with the Canada-US border is sometimes different from a lot of people that I know. I grew up in the border city of Sarnia.

I crossed the Canada-US border probably a coupl'a times a month for the first eighteen years of my life. Some of my friends have been confused when I tell them that. They ask, "why did you need to cross the border so often?" We didn't need to cross the border. We crossed the border because we didn't even think about it. Because the nifty fried chicken place was in Port Huron, Michigan. Because some weeks, eggs were cheaper at the Port Huron grocery store. Because there was a good comic book shop over there. Because certain medicines were over-the-counter there, but prescription-only here.

And it worked the other way, too. As a teen, I bused tables at a popular Chinese food restaurant near the border, and the Port Huronites would come across for dinner. (To this day, I still expect all Americans to have the Michigan accent, and am jarred when it's not true).

I have walked across the bridge several, and that part was kind of unusual. It took the US customs people a bit of time to figure out how to process pedestrians. But it was no big deal. People were sometimes turned back at the border but it seemed like a big game: "they turned one of our people back at the border today, so we'll turn one of their back today as well." Petty, but like an annoying family, in a way.

Officially, Port Huron and Sarnia were two different cities of different countries, but from our perspective, it was one big city with shops and restaurants on both sides of the river.

CTV reports that new, stricter border security has been implemented at the Sarnia-Port Huron border. Now, non-Canadian citizens will be fingerprinted and photographed. People refusing to be photographed and fingerprinted will be turned back at the border.

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. Mostly of Irish decent. Sarnia is pretty homogeneous. But I think that things will be different, now. I don't think that the border will be as much of an afterthought that it was for Sarnians like me.

And I'm not saying that the US has no right. I am saying, though, that in recent months, for the first time in my life, crossing the border is something that I think about. And perhaps even avoid.

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I went to college in Sault Ste. Marie. Much of the casual border-crossing came on Sundays - when our Canadian pals came to the American side because their bars were closed - and Mondays, when we did the same, in the opposite direction.

One long, cold winter, I hitch-hiked across to Sault, Ont. every night for play rehearsals. Canadian customs was always a piece of cake, but depending on who was working that night (I got to know them all) US customs could be a real pain in the ass.

It was the late '60s, amd word on the street was that the US Border Patrol could stop anyone, for any reason, and hold them for up to 90 hours without letting them contact anyone, and with no due process whatsoever. I have no idea if that was true, but there were lots of rumors of draft-dodgers trying to sneak back in to visit their families and being held incommunicado.

I suspect that in the long term the new rules will be used much as the old ones were (and as some airport screening measures are now): As a tool US Customs can use if they want to, but mostly won't because it's too much bother.