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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."
And people say the US is a police state. At least here people with 30-year-old shoplifting and minor drug possession convictions can aspire to become a senator!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
So that means that Bush won't be traveling to Canada any time soon, due to his DUI conviction?
Hah!
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
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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So if you were convicted for dodging the Vietnam draft by going to Canada, which the Canadian government allowed, would you be banned from returning now?
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?
... as someone who was recently refused a visitors' visa to the USA because I've worked 1 month in Saudi Arabia as a CRM consultant, I can't help a grin followed by an "oh bummer!"
I guess that the "keep our country to the locals" isn't so nice when you're on the other side of the border, isn't it?
Please mod me flamebait, but I really couldn't help it :D
Finally, people are starting to give us back as good as we are giving them. It's about time. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Hopefully every country will start applying the full standard and stopping US government officials they don't like from entering as well. Then maybe we'll see some change here, and possibly a little humility.
You foreigners have been way too cowardly, refusing standing up for yourselves against my government. Get some fucking backbone.
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!
FYI, I'm a Immmigration Officer with CBSA. That said, this message is my personal opinion and I do not represent the government. This scale currently exists [see Immigration Refugee Act, A36(1)(b) and A36(2)(b)]. If the crime you committed is equivalent to an indictable Canadian offence (ie not a misdemeanor), then you're inadmissable but its not impossible to get entry. Permits and pardons will allow you into the country. If you commit an offence which would give more than 10 years in prison (ie manslaughter, theft over $5000, etc), then you're inadmissible and its damn hard to get a permit into the country. That is, unless you're a celebrity. Bloody government. Also, if the offence was more than 10 years ago, you didn't commit any OTHER offences, and the offence was the first category, its as if the offence never existed. This article is bullshit media talking, what the hell do they know? Marijuanna possession isn't even an indictable offence in Canada unless its more than 22g. If anything, the guy was inadmissible for the DUI from seven years ago. (recall the 10 year rule, and he has at least two offences). I don't know anything else about this guy except from the article, but our laws are pretty misrepresented in the article.
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.
So, green card then? Or American-Indian status? Aren't any other PERMANENT visa types that I'm aware of...
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?
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
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.
FYI, I'm a Immmigration Officer with CBSA. That said, this message is my personal opinion and I do not represent the government.
I'm tagging this article FUD, because the writer is spreading fake information about Canada to try and scare people away. I have mod points, but I think its important that I try and stop the spread of this misinformation.
It is not true that Canada will turn someone away for a single minor offence 30 years ago. Only serious offences will make someone inadmissible to Canada. There is a very specific scale used to determine how serious a criminal offence is. First of all, the seriousness of the crime in your home country doesn't matter. We have to equate the offence to a CANADIAN law. For example, DUI's are routine and brushed off in the USA, whereas inn Canada you can get up to 5 years in prison for a 2nd or 3rd DUI.
This scale is as follows: [refer to Immigration Refugee Act, A36(1)(b) and A36(2)(b)]. If the crime you committed is equivalent to an indictable Canadian offence (ie not a misdemeanor), then you're inadmissable but its not impossible to get entry. Permits and pardons will allow you into the country. If you commit an offence which would give more than 10 years in prison (ie manslaughter, theft over $5000, etc), then you're inadmissible and its damn hard to get a permit into the country. That is, unless you're a celebrity. Bloody government.
In addition to the above, after a certain length of time an inadmissible person under the first category can be "deemed rehabilitated". The criteria is a little complicated, but in most cases a single indictable offence will be "dismissed" after ten years.
So refering to the above, you'll see the article writer doesn't know anything about our laws. I don't have any personal experience with the person refered to in the article, but I can infer a few things. For example, I'd say the person was inadmissible for the DUI from seven years ago. Its an indictable offence (ie serious), and it was less than 10 years ago. He also had other criminal convictions, which make rehabilitation impossible. Of course, he could be inadmissible for other things as well (other convictions he didn't mention, for example).
Given the above, its FUD to say he wasn't let into Canada for the marijuanna possession from 30 years ago. Marijuanna possession isn't even an indictable offence in Canada unless its more than 22g, so a single conviction of that offence wouldn't make him inadmissible.
I'd like to remind everyone that Canada's Immigration laws haven't changed in the last few years. There is nothing "new" referred to in this article. Our laws have always forbidden convicted criminals from entering the country, and we've had access to NCIC for YEARS. Stop spreading FUD about my country!
Finally, if thinking of coming to Canada and have a criminal conviction, contact the Canadian consulate nearest you. They can tell you wether your offence is serious or not. I suggest you fax, write, or go in person since they rarely answer phone calls.
Do NOT take any action on this advice. An officer obviously can't make a judgement on a persons inadmissibility except when they're seeking entry. Different officers might equate offences differently because there is a little grey area. This might give you a general idea however. If you're planning on coming to Canada, contact the nearest Canadian Consulate. Fax, write, or go in person since they rarely answer the phone.
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It depends on wether you were convicted, had deferred adjudication, etc. You'll have to look this up on the court records, since most people don't know offhand.
Assuming you were convicted, the DWAI on its own is an indictable offence. It has been more than ten years, and normally you'd be fine. However, that mischief offence could screw you over. If you were convicted of it, you've been convicted of "two or more offences not arising out of a single occurance". So, you're inadmissible under the A36(2)(b), which is the lesser section.
See "A36(2) A foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of criminality for (b) having been convicted outside Canada of an offence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute an indictable offence under an Act of Parliament, or of two offences not arising out of a single occurrence that, if committed in Canada, would constitute offences under an Act of Parliament;"
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowDoc/cs/I-2.5/bo-
To come to Canada, you'd need a waiver of rehabilitation. Its a piece of paper that says the offence is no longer an issue and you're not dangerous, and you can come to Canada as often as you want. A Canadian consulate, and some ports of entry can give you one of these. Alternatively, you could get a temporary resident permit, which is the same thing but is only good for one trip. They cost the same, so the first one is usually smarter to get.