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."

Comments

A taste of their own medicin

[FredDC]

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...

Re:A taste of their own medicin

[Rob the Bold]

Well, it seems like US citizens are getting a taste of their own medicin...

It does sound like payback to me. Not that the US doesn't deserve it, especially with our jackass of a president, but Canada might be cutting off their nose to spite their face. Denying 50- and 60-something baby-boomers tourist entry into Canada because they toked up 30 or 40 years ago is not a good idea economically.

This quote is cute:

"People say, 'I've been going to Canada for 20 years and never had a problem,' '' Lesperance says. "It's classic. I say, 'Well, you've been getting away with it for 20 years.' ''

IOW, they've been "getting away" with spending tourist dollars for 20 years without interference. I doubt that Canadian hotelliers, restauranteurs and merchants had any moral qualms to selling rooms, meals and souvenirs to Americans "criminals" during that time.

This has much more general implications. If things go as the article says, and international tourists from all over the world are turned away from their foreign destinations, you can bet that industries that cater to this business will get the laws changed in their favor and relax restrictions on jaywalkers.

Tit for Tat

[cdneng2]

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?

Re:Tit for Tat

[i_should_be_working]

I suspect that the "security zone" around US and Canada didn't happen because (from an admittedly Canadian point of view) the US became unreasonable about what security meant. We don't want to turn away everyone that the US does. And there have been several deportation and prison incidents on behalf of the states that have soured the situation further.

For instance, right now there's 9 year old Canadian child being held in jail in Texas. His crime? His parents are Iranian. They were on their way to Canada and were planning on staying there as political refugess from Iran (the parents are not presently Canadian, but were living there illegally a few years ago). On their way to Canada, on a flight that was not supposed to even touch down in America, the plane landed in Texas because a passenger had a heart attack. Somehow security focuses on this family (surprise, surprise) and they get held. Now, they wouldn't have just been let in freely in Canada, but they wouldn't be in jail either. Especially not a child (he's Canadian anyway). They would be allowed to apply and go through the procedure of claiming refugee status as everyone else does. So I just don't think the two countries can agree on who should be let in, and I'd place the blame on incidents like this which the US has committed. Afterall, we haven't locked up any 9 year old American children.

Know Your Place

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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.

Re:Funny

[Forseti]

That just doesn't make any sense...

I live next to a Canadian border. Believe me, U.S. Customs/DHS turns people away.

I'm with you so far. I lived on the Canadian side of the US-Canada border for a long while, and had a job where we had to travel to the states often. People get turned back all the time, even without criminal records.

A friend of mine is a permanent U.S. resident, but is not a U.S. citizen.

So, green card then? Or American-Indian status? Aren't any other PERMANENT visa types that I'm aware of...

He was born in Canada. But, he's not a Canadian citizen either as he was born on a Native American reservation in Canada.

Now that just doesn't make any sense. If he was born in Canada, Indian or not, he's a Canadian citizen. Canadians are even allowed dual citizenship! Plus, if he has Aboriginal status, which requires more than just being born on a reservation, then he has rights to freely cross the US-Canada border in any direction and immigration & customs on either side can't do shit to stop him, as long as he has his Aboriginal ID with him. Otherwise, according to you, he had a green card because of him permanent resident status. So, isn't this just a question of someone trying to cross the border without ID (never a good idea) rather than some ridiculous citizenship issue?

Exactly. This isn't really about data mining.

[perfessor multigeek]

C'mon, folks, look at the Canadian papers for five minutes and you'll know what this is really about. Canadians are enraged about "extraordinary rendition" of Canadians and their media has covered the issue intensely for years now. The DEA tried to seize Canadian property because a tunnel for running drugs ran under it. Multiple Canadians have been taken off and disappeared for years at a time, including a frickin' inkjet supply salesman who had the wrong five minute conversation with a guy suspected of being connected to Al Quada.

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

Re:This just in: your actions may have implication

[gstoddart]

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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