Hassled by Canadian immigration

I understand Canada has to be very careful about letting in ex-Marines and conservatives. They were just making sure you weren't going to subvert anyone's right to let Al Qaeda members slip thru the Canadian border.

I've had some interesting experiences going both ways on government business. I've been a convoy commander taking a lot of weapons and personnel across, where they take time to interrogate every person, in groups of four or five with the enlisted personnel.

Once, at Ft. Drum, NY, I was designated driver to take a group of officers up to Kingston, ON, for a night of R&R (hitting the bars). The HHC CO was sleeping in the backseat when we came back to the US. We were given the third degree, then he wouldn't wake up, and they said, "Do you have alcohol in here?" I said, "Only in him." The guy said, "Get out of here."

Another time I was going to Montreal from upstate NY with my brother. It was rainy, and the guard couldn't believe we were going sight-seeing. He wanted to know where I worked and what I did. When he found out I worked for the church, he decided I would need to prove it by responding in Latin to a Latin phrase. I suggested this was a bit absurd. He said, "If you're who you say you are, you'll know it." Very well. "Dominus vobiscum." Et cum spiritu tuo. "Have a nice rainy day in Montreal."

• Both of my identification badges from the Nameless Entity;

Aha! Now we have absolute, 200% irrefutable proof that Nameless Entity and the CIA are one and the same! After all, only the CIA issues two different IDs: first the normal ID, and second the License to Kill.

Yep. Watch your back, Coward. Or should I call you...George Yost of 123 Main St., Dayton, Ohio, SSN 342-03-3013?

No, no, no. The CIA does not issue licenses to kill, they got taken away thanks to the Church Commission and Stansfield Turner. Now you apply to ATF for the license to kill but first you have to spend a year in a probationary status with your Learner's Permit to Kill. This is followed by a written test and then a practical exam that tests your skills in armed and unarmed proactive elimination.

Besides, the CIA gets a bad rep. They are actually a benevolent organization, the initials stand for Christians In Action.

Bill, I've also been the designated driver from Watertown to Kingston on several occassions, some more memorable than others.

The CIA are a bunch of pushovers.

It's the RCIA you've got to worry about.

("No one expects ... the Rite of Christian Initiation!")

The RCIA hands out something worse than a license to kill - a license to "liturgize"

George Yost of 123 Main St., Dayton, Ohio, SSN 342-03-3013?

Hah. You just found one of a hundred names I go by. When you arrive at the address you traced, you'll merely find an empty apartment with a remotely-sabotaged computer in it. I've never been there.

BTW, I'm not James Caldwell, Yellowknife, Yukon SSN: 214-06-5178 either.

no booby traps? I'm disappointed.

no booby traps? I'm disappointed.

Who said there weren't?

Rats! I'd put $5 (US) on Opus Dei being the Nameless Entity and on Eric being an albino assasin. Coward...could you return my user manual on the tin-foil hat? Mine seems to be in need of adjustment.

Immigration officials ex officio fall into the category of "little people with little power" who therefore decide to make big trouble in the lives of ordinary and harmless citizens. This is true of every nation I've ever entered or exited, but the twist with the Canadians is that they tart up their attitude with the national Canadian virtue of sanctimoniously smug anti-Americanism, thereby rendering themselves vomitously intolerable. Don't even get me started on the hassles I've had getting my wife into this ghastly country. A white, female Catholic from Connecticut is a real security risk, don't you know, unlike the 27 Mohammed al Mohammed Alqwai "brothers" we let slip into the ports of Montreal every hour. Canada should simply be abolished.

"BTW, I'm not James Caldwell, Yellowknife, Yukon SSN: 214-06-5178 either."

Funny, I live in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, but I've never heard of a sister city in the territory next door. (smirk) For that matter, I've never met a Canadian with an SSN. We have Social Insurance Numbers, Or SINs.

I would have thought someone with the Nameless Entity would know a bit about geography. ;-)

I was once travelling into the UK from Germany with a US diplomatic passport. At the airport in Frankfurt I was taken aside by security and grilled about my travel to the (then) USSR.

Why did you travel to the USSR? "Official US government business." Why did you travel to the USSR? "Official US government business." Why did you travel to the USSR? "Official US government business." Why did you travel to the USSR? "Official US government business." Why did you travel to the USSR? "Official US government business."

Etc. Finally, they came to the point. Why was I taking that particular flight to London when I could have flown directly to the US on a flight earlier that day on the same airline? "Ummm, because if I had done that I wouldn't be SPENDING A WEEK IN LONDON FIRST!" "Oh. Enjoy your flight."

Funny, I live in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, but I've never heard of a sister city in the territory next door.

Yes, and I cost Eric and his CIA strike team a whole minute looking at a map to try to find Yellowknife, Yukon.

For that matter, I've never met a Canadian with an SSN. We have Social Insurance Numbers, Or SINs.

But I assume you have met Americans living in Canada. James Caldwell, if he existed, would be one of those.

I would have thought someone with the Nameless Entity would know a bit about geography. ;-)

I don't work for Nameless Entity; Eric does. Besides, it's not a wise to ever wager that the US Government knows its geography. Remember the Chinese Embassy bombing back during the air campaign against Milosevic?

Horror of horrors, they asked to see your I.D.! You call that "hassle"...?! I call that "standard operating procedure."

They questioned you for 10 minutes? How did you endure?!

American customs officials, on the other hand, have questions friends of mine for HOURS and caused them to miss flights (at their own expense), etc.

Having crossed the border both ways countless times, I can assure you that the Canadian customs officials are much easier than the American ones. You should be embarassed to call what you describe "hassled."

Perhaps Canadian customs thought you were Michael Moore???

And speaking of things porcine, remind me to tell you sometime about our experience trying to bring in some wild boar pancetta from Italy through the Philly airport.

All I can say is, the customs staff in Philly probably had a grand lunch that day.

(Luckily, they didn't question my gasoline can full of extra virgin olive oil).

Mecandes, did you read the post? They didn't just ask for an I.D., they asked for five. You can buy a house with much shakier proof.

What made this strange was that they knew I was (ostensibly) on official U.S. government business. I'm a nobody, but for all they knew they were hassling somebody important.

If your friends get hassled for hours, I'm sure there's probably a reason...who do you hang out with, anyway?

Ah, now everybody gets to hear my week-of-September-11-stranded-in-Canada-without-an-ID story. (I think I've told this to Eric in person. You'll have to endure it again bud.)

I was attending the Toronto Film Festival (greatest festival in the world, BTW). Sometime on the last day of the festival (I found out as I was checking out of the hotel), I lost my driver's license. Since US drivers licenses are good to drive across the Canadian and Mexican border, that was all I took with me. It was the only government-issued official photo ID I had (with me or otherwise). I had never bothered with getting a passport because other than driving across the two US land borders, I have left the US as an adult.

So the next day, I go to the American consulate in Toronto and ask what I need to drive across the border since I'd lost the only photo ID I had and cannot replace it from Canada. The clerk says, "can you produce a copy of your birth certificate?" I say "that probably won't do as I was born outside the US, in Britain." "Can you get a copy of your naturalization papers?" "If a fax will do, yes."

So I call down to my parents in Texas, and my mom says she has both my birth and naturalization papers and she'll just dig them out and call me back in 10 minutes. I call back about 20 minutes later and she has found both her naturalization certificate and my father's, but neither mine nor my sister's. Lesley doesn't have hers either and doesn't remember getting it (as I didn't either).

My mother gives me the date and place plus the naturalization numbers on her and my dad's certificates. The numbers are consecutive, and since we were naturalized together, it stands to reason that me and my sister would therefore be among the two numbers before or after. I tell her not to fax hers and my dad's up to the Toronto consulate yet, since *surely* they'll be able to check just four numbers to verify my naturalization, and that the date and place would serve as additional verification.

Surely.

By this time, I'm talking to the Consul personally. And he tells me they cannot verify my naturalization based on that information, because those papers are held by the INS (then part of the Department of Justice), while consulates and embassies are part of the Department of State. Thus, he says, nobody at his consulate can log into DOJ computers. In order to get an INS employee with the needed bureaucratic access, I would need to go to the embassy in Ottawa.

I'm now thinking I'm royally screwed. I then have to sign several papers, under penalty of perjury, that say I was naturalized at this day and place with my parents, whose Naturalization Numbers are "x" and "x+1," and include the basic verifiable facts about myself, including where I live and work. I also described the circumstances of my not having a valid photo ID. I also gave xerox prints of my workplace ID (which, though not governmental-official, has a picture), a proof of auto insurance (as evidence that I HAD a driver's license), my Social Security card (which is official-government but has no photo), and a couple of minor forms of ID like video-rental store, car-wash-discount and ATM-debit cards (I think just as proof of my name and that I have the same sort of things on me that Americans routinely carry around).

So with all that in hand, the Consul issues me a one-year passport on his own authority, even though I didn't have the legally required papers. The Consul did this on September 16, 2001, so I was quite grateful and relieved. I can't help but think being a Christian (or at least not obviously Muslim) native speaker of English might have had something to do with his willingness to use his discretionary power. Had some of those descriptors been otherwise, I'd probably still be in Canada. Ironically, in the three or so hours I was in the consulate, one of the other persons doing some kind of business (I would have killed to know what it was) was a man in Muslim scholar's garb with his chador-clad wife, though neither looked especially Middle Eastern.

Why on earth would you have your SSN on your driver's license? Bad move!

It used to be automatic in Virginia, Gordon. They have changed it in the last few years.

Eric, my friend who was hassled by American immigration officers and put out hundreds of dollars works for NASA.

No, asking for all the ID you have on hand is not strange at all.

If you ask me, claiming that you are on "official business" is just MORE likely to get you detained and questioned. (And what you went through was far from that.)