I apologies in advance as this information is second hand, and some of the details are sketchy.
I have an acquaintance that was detained at the Canadian border over night (he flew in), because he had committed a felony in the USA. He was not allowed in and ended up forfeiting a VERY expensive ski vacation.
The felony conviction happened THIRTY YEARS AGO. Drug bust. Not sure how much or how bad, but I guess he spent a little time in jail. AFAIK, he has been completely clean since. He has created and operated 3 of his own businesses, and IMHO is an upstanding honest person.
Is this plausible? Seems way, way over the top to me.
Very plausible. I’m not positive, but I think it’s SOP for Canadian Border Patrol to deny anyone with a felony conviction regardless of how old that conviction is or what the crime was.
I’ve driven across the border countless times and never been asked if I have ever been convicted of a felony. I do know of at least one person with a felony DUI who was basically told that he was not welcome in Canada. Ever.
I’m not sure if they pulled up his criminal record from his drivers license number or if they asked him the question and he answered truthfully. In fact, I don’t know if they even have direct access to US criminal records.
I’m not sure if questioning criminal history is standard when arriving by air since I’ve never flown to Canada.
They questioned me for a couple of hours a few years ago because I only had a one way ticket - which was perfectly legal at the time, if maybe a bit unusual for UK visitors…
They’ll keep you out for a 30-year-old misdemeanor.
Kinda’ sucks, you can have a 40-year-old rap for public intoxication from your freshman year of college, and still won’t be able to cross into Canada and spend your freaking pension money as a tourist there… you silly hellraiser, you…
By the way, if you’re George W. Bush, they’ll give you a pass on that rule.
You can do background checks with a first and last name, but you’ll spend a whole lot of time arresting innocent people if you don’t use further information to screen your subjects.
Imagine how many “Michael Jones” are out there with felony warrants!
Remember that if an incident isn’t a felony, the most common database US law enforcement uses tiypically will not know a thing about it.
Finding out about a misdemeanor conviction in another state can take research.
Finding out about a misdemeanor conviction so old that they weren’t using computers in the jurisdiction in question back when it was committed can require you to know WHICH COURTHOUSE the subject was tried in.
This was 30 years. But that does not seem to be the problem.
I really don’t know this fellows history real well. But I would trust him. I do know he is very very anti-drug. He is a bit of an ‘in your face’ kind of guy, which is one reason I don’t make a point to see him. He is an old SO of a friend of my Wife.
Perhaps, when questioned, he came off a bit too strong (I could see that) push came to shove and that was that.
The whole thing does sound a little weird to me. I think he was convicted for selling drugs 30 years ago. I think he may have spent some time in jail. Maybe a month? Not sure. He’s no king pin.
The guy is very, very smart. I doubt that he would admit that he had been convicted of this if asked. At 30 years ago, it’s barely a blip on the radar.
When I overheard the conversation my Wife was having with her friend about her friends old SO, I thought that the guy he was traveling with must have had some grass or something and he got caught up in it because they where traveling together.
There seems to be a couple of pieces missing from this puzzle. But perhaps, this fellow just got in the Canadians face over it and got kicked out. That I can see.
Happens all the tiime going into the U.S. too. Several years ago, there was a news report of a Canadian student going back to school at an Americna university. The customs officer said “So, when’s te last time you smoked pot?” The kid answered truthfully and was denied entry to the U.S. pretty much for the rest of his life because he “admitted to committing a crime”.
He had a scholarship to a very good school, so his parents hired an expert lawyer. I don’t remember if there were any follow-up stories to tell you of the outcome though. I’ll see if I can find a link. It was an awfully long time ago, so I don’t know if there would be anything online about it still.
No offence, but these two statements seem a little contradictory to me. It’s definitely not smart to answer the Customs officers’ questions truthfully, as they don’t take kindly to deception and they can ruin your day.
I’ve heard plenty of nightmare stories about people being stopped from getting into the US and was personally involved in one story. My colleague was supposed to accompany us on a business trip. He was from a former Soviet protectorate, had a job and wife and kids in Canada, where he was long established. But he was kind of shy and wasn’t good at looking people in the eye when he spoke to them. We figured he looked ‘evasive’ or something and he was making the sin of being from some ‘furrin’ country.
Sorry to say but there seems to be an attitude among some of the officers at the gate that everybody is just itching to live in the US and is only living in Canada until they can get in. They denied him entry three times. Idiots. We needed him badly on this trip because he was pretty much the chief programmer for the software we were testing.
I spent a couple hours on the phone convincing US Immigration to let him in but the officer that I spoke to who was supposed to meet him at the gate didn’t and he was denied by another one.
He didn’t have a record and nor had any of the other folks I’d heard had been turned away. What you maybe don’t know is that US Immigration officers have absolute right and jurisdiction over who gets in or not, don’t have to provide a reason, and cannot be questioned.
If the reformed drug dealer was very, very smart, he would have applied for a certificate of rehabilitation prior to trying to enter Canada. The application process includes a thorough criminal record search that would have established his good character since his sole conviction. Failing to do this, and instead hoping that an immigration official would exercise discretion and waive him through on the spot without further investigation, was rather shortsighted.
(Of course the immigration officer might just have been trying to Bogart that wonderful Canadian powder snow.)
An American with whom I ski managed to have his relative’s vehicle seized at the border.
He was concerned about the legality of bringing the vehicle into Canada, so he lied to the customs officer. Unfortunately for him, he got the law backwards. Had he told the truth, the vehicle would have been admitted. Based on what he said, however, the vehicle had to be seized.
Once a lawyer explained to him that it really would have been OK for him to bring the van over, he went back to customs and changed his story. Upon learning that the fellow lied the first time, customs continued to hold the van on these new grounds of lying.
Moral of the story? Be honest and be prepared.
And with that, I’m heading off for an afternoon of skiing, which is much more interesting now that this one ski buddy is in trouble with customs, for another friend with whom I ski is a lord high mucky-muck at customs here. Odds are that sooner or later the two of them will end up on the lift together with me, which will certainly be a very awkward few minutes.
Ahhh. I see what you are saying. I’m really not sure how this played out. I suspect that if he was asked if he was ever convicted of a felony, he might have answered no. I’m not sure.
This is a fella that got caught selling drugs 30 years ago. It may have just been to his buddy’s, I really don’t know. He has since created and operated 3 small businesses and as far as I can see is completely above board.
I think that it is such small potatos, and it was a lifetime ago that he doesn’t even think about it.
It must have happend right when he was out of high school. At about 18 years old. He is 50 years old now. I’m 46. He was busted when he was a kid. I can understand that those things become buried and life goes on to the point that he may not even think about it any more.
This fellow has a legitimate licensed blasting business. He blows stuff up for a living.
He blows up rocks with explosives at construction sites when they are just too big for any equipment to move it out of the way.
I have wondered how in the heck he gets through airport security screenings. Ya gotta know that the chemicals involved in this does collect on his clothing sooner or later.
I wonder if there was a hit on him or his luggage or a pair of socks for explosive compounds that sent up another search that looked deeper into his past.
There was a very good article about this issue yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle. The bottom line is that Canada has always had these restrictions on admission, but they only recently have updated their systems to be able to obtain more U.S. records. People who were able to cross the border easily in the past are now being denied entry.
