Crossing American Borders - and "Nice" Immigrants

 

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

I am planning an extended road trip next month that may include a sight-seeing jaunt up into the Prairie Provinces of Canada and will ultimately take me to see my daughter and her family in Salem, Oregon.  I have driven to Oregon three times in the past, twice from Missouri and once from Arizona, and have seen most of the standard tourist traps along the way,  This time I wanted to branch out a little and take in some new sights.  I'll literally be going where the road - or the mood - takes me.

Right now I anticipate leaving the Kansas City area early on the morning of either June 17th or 18th.  I will blog about the trip daily in this space.

In preparation for the trip I have been creating and filling a supply list and poring over atlases as I plan some of the basics of the itinerary.  This morning I had a visit with my primary medical physician so that he could check under the hood and deem me fit to travel - which, after an overdue tetanus shot, he did.  I will also have the Kia Soul checked out and serviced a few days before I cast off.  I am trying to cover all of my bases.

Studying the atlases has started me thinking about the United States' literal place in the world.  There is lots of talk in tbis country, especially from the right-wing noise machine, about "border" issues, and one almost begins to feel that we are a single-border country, which is not true.   From an aerial perspective the continental US (which excludes Alaska, Hawaii, and our island territories) is a boxed-in nation.   We have the Pacific Ocean running down the entire west side of the country, and the Atlantic on the east, Canada and the Great Lakes covering our northern border, and the Caribbean Sea and Mexico to the south.

Our two land borders, those with Canada and Mexico, are vastly different in length and in how they are operated.

According to my close, personal friend, ChatGPT, the land border between the United States and Mexico is 1,954 miles in length and has 48 official land crossing points.  The US-Canadian border 5,525 miles long (more than 2.8 times longer than our border with Mexico, and 119 official land crossing points - more than twice as many as we have with Mexico.

I have only crossed the land border with Mexico one time - on Saturday, November 23, 2007 and, as described in my blog posting of that date, crossing into and out of Mexico was phenomenally easy.  I left my car at a McDonalds in Nogales, Arizona (for a $4.00 fee), and walked across the border into Mexico.   Entering that foreign nation was a breeze.   All I had to do was just step through a turnstile, no ID requested.  Upon returning to the USA, I presented my passport to a bored US border agent who didn't even look at it.  Mexican nationals, however, had to present specific ID which was read by a scanner.   There was also a border patrol checkpoint on the highway twenty miles north of Nogales through which the traffic was slowly funneled.  The old white man with the white hair in the Chevy Cavalier convertible was waved right on through.

In the early 1990's my family and I had a much more difficult time getting into Ontario, Canada, at the land (bridge) crossing in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  Canadian agents had us completely empty our large Chevy van, which was carrying five people and a ton of luggage and camping gear, and then they went trough everything, piece-by-stinking-piece.  Fortunately, when we crossed back into the US along the Maine border (from beautiful Quebec) a few days later, it was hassle-free.

There is no lesson in all of that border history, except this:  Be prepared.  But hey, I learned that in Boy Scouts.

I have never had a problem entering the US from any direction, even by air, because, I suspect, many officials working the border have a Donald Trump view of things.  There are immigrants from what Trump terms "shithole" countries, such as Haiti (his example, not mine) and they get scrutinized much harder that immigrants from "nice" countries like Norway (again, his example).  Trump is so fond of immigrants from "nice" countries that he has married two of them.

Perhaps some Canadian border agents see the United States as a "shithole" country.  I will know more about that after my trip!

(I once listened to an older, aggravated Canadian tourist - in Mexico of all places - berate the United States over its abhorrently lax gun laws.  When she had finished venting her spleen, I told her that I could not agree more, and then picked up her check and paid for the drink that she had been enjoying.  I considered that to be a nice gesture, but I think Trump's definition of "nice" has more to do with skin tone than it does with being courteous to strangers!)