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Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing
blu3 b0y writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that new information sharing agreements have made it as easy for a Canadian border officer to know the full criminal records of US citizens as it is for their local police. As a result, Canadian officials are turning away American visitors for ancient minor convictions, including 30-year-old shoplifting and minor drug possession convictions. Officials claim it's always been illegal to enter Canada with such convictions without getting special dispensation, they just had no good way of knowing about them until recent security agreements allowed access. One attorney speculates it's not long before this information will be shared with other countries as well, causing immigration hassles worldwide."
Other countries can turn our people away, but we can't seem to turn other counties people away.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
So...I suppose people now will get their undies in a bundle over this. Putting aside for a moment the tenuous at best "YRO" category for this - where's the surprise, what's the problem? If you want to go visit a foreign country, they get to decide who they let in and for what reasons. If you don't like it, well, don't do things to limit that option for yourself, or visit some other place. Their country, their rules.
Well, it seems like US citizens are getting a taste of their own medicin...
The US has been doing the same to many foreign visitors for years, while traffic in the other direction has always been quite open.
The US doesn't allow people who have committed minor offences as well, except with special clearance (and I don't think getting one is easy, not sure about this but it would seem only logical that the US would make this hard). Now some countries are deciding to do apply this rule as well, seems only fair...
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This article isn't about Canada being a police state.
It was the US that wanted Canadians to have passports to enter the US. Canada implemented the same requirement for Americans entering Canada.
It was the US that wanted the sharing of criminal records for Canadians travelling into the United States, so Canada implemented the same thing for all Americans visiting Canada.
It was the US that instituted the tightened security measures, Canada just followed suit.
Canadians are already being screened this way entering the US, why are Americans upset when Canada starts doing the same thing?
No sig for now.
If you don't like it, well, don't do things to limit that option for yourself, or visit some other place. Their country, their rules.
Such a statement cedes an awful lot of power to a national government. Remember, until now people could get into Canada even having done bad things. The 60-year-old who got caught driving drunk back in 1980 and has already repaid society for it can't undo what he once did. If a Canadian company wants to hire him, or Canadian relatives want him to visit, what can they do? Lobby the government to start being more lenient?
This will ultimately lead to even more privacy-violating information sharing as potential employers demand to know about any minor misdemeanor a potential hire has ever committed. They'll have to do this in order to be sure that their new employee doesn't get turned away at the border, but in the process the principle of being able to repay one's debts to society after a transgression will be even further eroded.
Fifty years ago these incidents went into dusty file boxes in the back closet of city hall; now they're in every border agent's database and are impeding people's movement. Should our societies consider mitigating these previously-impossible long term effects by shortening prison terms and lowering fines? Politically, how can one argue that without being seen as soft on crime?
Little bit of a disconnect between Canadian Border Security and Canadian Tourism industry. The only thing this will do is put a cooling effect on American tourists going to Canada. Mostly because of media over reaction and hype. But still, this enforced policy will most certainly cost Canada millions in tourist dollars because the average american will not know if a 30 year old littering conviction will keep them out, so why bother making vacation plans to Canada. All this enforced security is still not going to keep the terrorists from just walking across the border. Seems rather pointless.
I live in the EU. Technically, I can send goods, and especially money, from my own country to another in the union and not have to pay any customs or tarriffs. There is free trade of goods here.
Technically, there is also free movement of people, but this is a sham. Even before the 9/11 hysteria began, you still needed a passport to go just about anywhere. Every time I travel in this suppossedly free union, I have to present my papers and declare my goods etc. The stated purpose for these controls is protecting us from terrorism, immigration, criminals, etc, etc, etc. The reality is that government want to show that we only enter and leave countries by their say so. Plebs have no right of free travel. (Big businessmen and polititians on the other hand, regularly find themselves exempt from border controls).
I knew someone worked for a short time in Saudi Arabia. When he arrived they slapped a sticker over his passport with the name of the company he worked in english and arabic. The message was clear. He was a vassal of that company, and the saudi government. To leave that country, he needed an exit visa. If the company wasn't prepared to give him one, he was trapped there. If the company no longer wished to employ him, his visa would expire and he would be there illegally. He was completely at the mercy of the company he worked for.
That is what passports and visas are for. The passport is a direct descendant of the lords chit, when back in the middle ages you needed your lords permission to leave his demense. In modern times we have replaces "lord" with government, or in saudi arabia, "company". Passports do not exist to protect us. They exist to control us. Governments yearn for the day when every citizen must have their papers, when we are once again serfs for private companies.
Governments are beginning to share data in this way not because their own situation has changed, but because the situation of the companies people work for has changed. Companies are now global, and they need to move their loyal employees around with them, and restrict the movement of those who displease them. Troublemakers or other undesirables are best kept hemmed in by petty rules and restrictions. Blemishes on the records of the favoured will be ignored. Parking tickets on the record of union organisers will result in revocation of their chits.
In all likelihood, our society will become like saudi arabia long before saudi arabia becomes like us. Western society is regressing, and increasingly stringent border and passport controls are a symptom of that regression.
May the Maths Be with you!
No, but you can send them to Syria to be tortured (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar)
I'm not sure what the issue is here. Citizens entering the United States are expected to abide by our rules and regulations for entry (fairly draconian at this point i'm sure). How is it not fair that other countries not hold our citizens to the same standards?
Because two wrongs don't make a right.
Government A makes thinks worse for Citizen B. Government C responds by making things worse for Citizen D. Nope, I don't see how that's fair - Governments A and C end up increasing their powers, and citizens B and D lose out.
A 30 year old minor drug conviction with a completely clean record since then, like the guy cited in the article, can be safely discounted. Senator or anything else, it's usually safe to say that the person in question has cleaned themselves up. Only in rare cases might that be untrue.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
It is short-sighted and foolish to only fight against a law/policy when it is enforced.
Canadians are pissed and they're sick of being treated like children by the Bush administration.
So this is tit for tat.
You Americans unfairly persecute Canadians? Fine. Let's see how you like it.
Even Conservatives are coming out in public to decry U.S. policies. Do you really think that none of them will find ways to get political capital out of this?
This isn't about better access to data. It's bloody well the best way yet they've found to show their anger. And don't forget for a moment that all of these cases create a bargaining chip.
"You want your citizens to have freeer access to Canada? Sure. What's in it for us?"
I guarantee you that all over the world people are laughing their asses off about this. And, frankly, I can see their point.
-Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
That is a power that our national government has always had, you're just operating under the belief that it wasn't so. Much like the US applies their rules on inbound people to everyone else -- hell, the US has extended it to their entire airspace. For that reason, myself and a lot of other Canadians (and people from around the globe) are choosing not to enter the US -- they might do more than just deny you entry; they might act on legal advice from Gonzales which says we can be arbitrarily detained without a lawyer on the whim of the immigration people. That whole Habeus Corpus thing.
It has apparently been illegal for people with certain criminal convictions etc to enter the country for quite some time. They just haven't been able to track it. When Martha Stewart wanted to come to Canada she had to get a piece of paper from the government which gave her permission despite her criminal conviction. I believe 50 cent has had to do this before (or, was at least threatened with it, don't remember the specifics). They're just more high-profile and it was easier to identify.
This is not some new, unchecked power of a 'national government' -- this is what has always been true -- individual nations (including neighbors) can choose who they choose to allow entry and who they deny it to. You don't have a constitutional right to enter Canada, and I don't have a Charter right to enter the US. It simply doesn't work that way.
If anything, it is new US requirements for information sharing and security which is providing the Canadian agencies with enough information to bar entry. I'm sure this is also reciprocal, and there are probably more Canadians being turned away at the US border because of the exact same program. This is a side effect, not a primary event.
Again, don't blame Canada for that one. We're responding to US government demands that we provide that information, and the US has extended their laws so that information collected in Canada by American companies can be fed back to the US government -- against our privacy laws. This is happening all aroound us, and while I agree it sucks, we're not the ones driving this.
You probably can't. The US stance on certain things is very rigid -- and, some of those policies are coming north. The US has had mandatory minimum sentencing for many crimes for quite a while, and there are noises being made about it up here in the Great White North. We try to fight such things, but, it often seems futile since the US just steam-rolls over everyone involved anyway.
Don't naively believe that we're abusing our power to decide who we allow to enter our country. The American politicians are probably still saying we don't do enough to keep people out of our country.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hey Canada has had these laws on the books for a long time it seems. Now they can enforce them because of better technology. Canada has the right to enforce it's laws and the right to change them.
It doesn't bother me at all.
Doesn't offend me at all.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Get your facts straight. Canada did not pass a law that forbids Americans from entering Canada without a passport.
What ACTUALLY happened, was that the USA passed a law saying every person entering the USA needs a passport, including their own citizens. So, if you show up at the Canadian border you probably won't let in. Why? Because if we let you into Canada, you can't go home and we'll be stuck with you.
I agree that cases like the 30 years-old marijuana possession are ridiculous. But looking in the big picture, this is poetic justice!
:-)), there's good people and bad people in the USA. But i'm telling that maybe now can be easier to those people that are (wrongfully, in my opinion) turned away from Canada to understand why 90% of the world have a bad vision of the USA. Only when the good people on the USA (and I believe they are the vast majority) starts to REALLY take pressure on the fascist government that took place there, they will be forced to change behaviour.
On the article, one of the men that could not cross the border talks about being in a full room for three hours, like a criminal, to be turned away. For years (way before 9/11), the U.S. act like this with a good chunk of the visitors. More than that: in some countries, you need to wait hours in a line just to an interview with someone in the consulate when you try to get a visa to travel to USA. And, after those hours on the line, the consulate representative can just tell you that you can't get a visa, and is not obligated to tell you why.
Please note that I'm obviously not saying that the MAJORITY of the americans agree with it. I know lovely people from the USA, and like all the countries on earth (and universe
--- Illogical Spock
Imagine that. A country other than the US doing what it wants. Geez, yanks. Grow up. True north, strong and free. Free to do whatever we want, thank you.
I'm a Canadian permanent resident and I do a lot of travelling back and forth between the States (I have just a regular 10 year B1 visa for the States) and Canada.
:)
In my experience Canadian border officials are dicks. They consistently give me a lot of hassle for some reason. I have no convictions of any kind, i mean just the fact that I'm a landed immigrant should give them a clue that my background has been thoroughly checked. But no. I also see them hassling many people who differ from their lilly white Caucasian definition of safe.
On the other hand US border officials are a breeze, never had a problem. The only time I ever had to wait for 30 minutes was crossing into the States at Buffalo, but I was travelling with a Russian then and he think he was the reason
"all broken things dream of repair" - chris letcher
Again, don't blame Canada for that one. We're responding to US government demands that we provide that information,
Don't respond to it or you *are* to blame. What kind of a idiotic argument is that?!?
and the US has extended their laws so that information collected in Canada by American companies can be fed back to the US government -- against our privacy laws. This is happening all around us, and while I agree it sucks, we're not the ones driving this.
So don't break your own fucking laws or you are to blame. Again, what kind of an idiotic argument is that?!?
You're not driving it, but you're riding shotgun reading the map.
The fact that the US has gone headlong into fascism does not in any way absolve you from responsibility for your actions.