And then there’s their fire department: “During an Independence Day fireworks display, the organizers accidentally burned down their fire hall with the fire engine inside.” Hyder, Alaska - Wikipedia
US major league baseball player not going to Canada to play because of legal issues. He plead guilty but has no sentence yet
That seems fair – he was indicted on charges of “disorderly conduct and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.” Gun offenses are taken particularly seriously in Canada.
Here are some examples of admittance denials going the other way that seem, to put it mildly, somewhat less justified:
Last year, media reported on the case of a Chilean woman who innocently told U.S. immigration officials in Los Angeles that she had smoked pot in Colorado: “It’s legal there,” she said. She found herself in a holding cell, then deported back to Chile with a lifetime ban on entering the United States, derailing a relationship with a U.S. citizen and her plans to attend grad school in Colorado.
Matthew Harvey wants to take his three-year-old daughter Lika to Disneyland in California, but after being banned from the United States for the rest of his life, that task isn’t going to be easy … “They said that I was inadmissible because I admitted to smoking marijuana after the age of 18 and before I’d received my medical marijuana licence,” he said.
Ellen Richardson went to Pearson airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she’d paid about $6,000. But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry.
“I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,” said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others.
Amanda Box … [is a] 38-year-old Toronto woman who is bipolar and takes medication … in mid-September … she went to Pearson Airport with her American boyfriend to go to his home in Colorado for a weekend … While she was standing in front of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, Box says he looked at his computer screen “and he said something about ‘mental health issues.’ Then he said, ‘Yeah, you’re really crazy’.”
Box said he told her that she wasn’t being allowed to enter the U.S. and that she needed more documentation because she was considered a “flight risk” …
If a person is convicted of a crime that could be prosecuted as an indictable offence in Canada, or convicted of a couple of non-indictable crimes, they are not eligible to be admitted into Canada. An indictable offence is a more serious offence, and a summary offence is a less serious offence. This does not directly correlate with American felony and misdemeanor offences, but is somewhat similar. The one that stops many Americans at the border when they try to enter Canada is having been convicted while impaired/blowing over etc. An offence of this type committed in Canada could be prosecuted as either a summary offence or an indictable offence, so an American with a misdemeanor conviction of this sort will not be admissible to Canada. In order to get into Canada, such a person would have to satisfy the Canadian Border Services Agency that they have been rehabilitated. “SON HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?” It might be as simple as explaining the circumstances, or as complicated as producing an exhaustive records search.
Yep, been there, lovely place. Standard border crossing staffing however. One needs a passport or Nexus card.
I love my Nexus card.
Canada has access to a database that shows everyone in the US who is convicted of a crime?
Not everyone convicted of a crime, but ostensibly everyone convicted of a serious misdemeanor or a felony. If it is in your FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC), then we have access to it.
I noticed this wasn’t documented above,
If you are in the US and are near the Canadian border and think you may qualify as being “deemed rehabilitated” you can ask for an assessment at a Port of Entry.
Being assessed at a Canadian Port of Entry
Here is the self checklist from that site:
You are eligible to apply for deemed rehabilitation at a port of entry if:
[ul]
[li]you only had one conviction in total or committed only one crime[/li][li]at least ten years have passed since you completed all sentences (payment of all fees, jail time completed, restitution paid, etc.)[/li][li]the crime you committed is not considered a serious crime in Canada AND[/li][li]the crime did not involve any serious property damage, physical harm to any person, or any type of weapon.[/li][/ul]
If that fails you can go through the individual rehabilitation process at a visa application centre. In the US that means sending it via mail to LA or NYC, which takes a long time to process.
What ever you do, don’t wait until your fellow travelers are approaching the border to let them know. As Muffin mentioned they do try to be reasonable. It is a wonderful country and well worth the effort if you have to go through these steps to visit.
While I have a clean record the only time I ever had any issues, which were much less impactful than US customs on the return trip.
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I was a passenger in a car on the Washington State Ferry to Sidney BC, and I used a duffel bag with a very old and out of state airline name tag on a duffle bag. We won the random car search lottery and they asked me about it, but had no problems after explaining I just hadn’t flown with that bag for a very long time.
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I arrived at the Pleasant Camp Border Crossing north of Haines Alaska in December stating that I was driving up to Inuvik. Not many tourists drive the Dempster in Winter and this is about 4000 miles round trip, so I had to explain that I understood the distances involved and what my travel time expectations were that the trip would take two weeks and explain that I had planned for up to a month absence from work if there were weather issues.
I live in Seattle and have had to dash several people’s travel dreams when they said they were going to “pop up to Alaska” for a few days so I understand that caution. Having someone show up and say that they are going to drive to the arctic circle on the shortest days of the year is reason to be concerned. But it felt like genuine concern and not like interrogation like the other direction.
The portages along the border between Lake of the Woods and Lake Superior, courtesy of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, but no dawdling allowed.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=15019429
Interesting. I wonder if that’s because it’s RealID compliant?
There’s also a passport card (issued by the same follks that issue regular passports) that is good for entry to Canada and the Caribbean but only via road or boat, not by air.
More and more states’ driver’s licenses are becoming RealID compliant. We live in Virginia, which is one of the last to do so. I don’t know if that would suffice to return to the US and I wouldn’t risk it without checking beforehand.
A non-RealID compliant license is in theory not acceptable for domestic air travel. A passport would suffice - but moronic TSA agents (I know that’s redundant) have been known to fail to recognize this as valid ID.
While Enhanced DLs are RealID compliant it is because they are Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative complaint.
Enhanced Licenses are proof of U.S. citizenship and RealID compliant DLs are not.
As I understand it, both sides have access to each other’s criminal databases; hence the story of the woman denied US entry for “clinical depression”. Actually, she had attempted suicide and the 911 call details for the ambulance were in the database, including her name. This is not the situation between Canada/USA and other countries AFAIK.