01-11-2004, 05:05 AM
For what it is worth, in the wake of 9/11 and the recent 'orange' alerts over the Christmas/New Year's holidays, I noted some differences as we made our annual visit to some American friends who live just across the border.
1) There are X-ray machines that scan the vehicle before you have your friendly chat with the border official - new thing since last year's visit.
2) The man asked for identification instead of just asking for citizenship. He took the identification and looked at it to compare the photographs to us.
3) Instead of taking our word for it that there were four children in the car, as was usual in prior years, the man opened the rear car door and visually checked for them and re-looked at my husband and me.
He did not search the car. He did not ask for identification for the children.
It took about an hour to cross the bridge to get to that point. On the way home (a Sunday evening) we cruised along just fine until we got to the sign that said "1 1/4 miles to the border", at which point we commenced the stop'n'go of waiting to get across. This only took about an hour to manage, and our bitching about the wait to get home was silenced very quickly by the sight of about seven miles of backed up traffic of those waiting to get into the U.S.A. in the other lanes. It seems there were quite a few Americans who had done much the same as we did, but in the other direction. B)
The numbers cited about how many cross at the land crossings per annum are difficult to interpret. A lot of people who live in Buffalo go grocery shopping in Fort Erie, for example. They go to Niagara Falls to go drinking and gambling too. I know people who live on one side and work on the other. Do they get counted as two crossings per day? I know many cottagers who live in the U.S.A. and own cottages in Canada. They cross at least twice a week for six months a year. What about all the truck traffic that crosses? NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) means that a lot of goods cross and re-cross the borders on a regular basis. Does this count every truck driver's crossings?
1) There are X-ray machines that scan the vehicle before you have your friendly chat with the border official - new thing since last year's visit.
2) The man asked for identification instead of just asking for citizenship. He took the identification and looked at it to compare the photographs to us.
3) Instead of taking our word for it that there were four children in the car, as was usual in prior years, the man opened the rear car door and visually checked for them and re-looked at my husband and me.
He did not search the car. He did not ask for identification for the children.
It took about an hour to cross the bridge to get to that point. On the way home (a Sunday evening) we cruised along just fine until we got to the sign that said "1 1/4 miles to the border", at which point we commenced the stop'n'go of waiting to get across. This only took about an hour to manage, and our bitching about the wait to get home was silenced very quickly by the sight of about seven miles of backed up traffic of those waiting to get into the U.S.A. in the other lanes. It seems there were quite a few Americans who had done much the same as we did, but in the other direction. B)
The numbers cited about how many cross at the land crossings per annum are difficult to interpret. A lot of people who live in Buffalo go grocery shopping in Fort Erie, for example. They go to Niagara Falls to go drinking and gambling too. I know people who live on one side and work on the other. Do they get counted as two crossings per day? I know many cottagers who live in the U.S.A. and own cottages in Canada. They cross at least twice a week for six months a year. What about all the truck traffic that crosses? NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) means that a lot of goods cross and re-cross the borders on a regular basis. Does this count every truck driver's crossings?
And you may call it righteousness
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake
When civility survives,
But I've had dinner with the Devil and
I know nice from right.
From Dinner with the Devil, by Big Rude Jake