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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

Every country is like this. Israel is the scariest but I remember decades ago crossing into Switzerland by train and in the middle of the night being woken up by border guards with barking German shepherds asking for my passport. I have so many stories it’s funny. On top of the other stories I’ve already posted, my friend who is Canadian drove into Buffalo for dinner and on his way back, they asked him where are you going. He answered “Canada” and they detained him and pulled apart his car looking for drugs. He was detained for hours until they let him go.

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As a Canadian living near the border (as many Canadians are!), I would often drive into the US for shopping. There are a number of towns that seem dedicated to serving Canadians, like Watertown, NY. I've found that often the US border guards would be much nicer than the Canadian border guards, probably because the Canadians are the ones that need to deal with the customs rules (Canadians aren't trying to smuggle their new purchases back to the US without paying tax!).

I haven't been on a shopping trip like that in a while though, and I find it hard to believe I'll ever do it again now. I feel bad for Watertown, but with the tariffs and the risk of detention, its not worth it.

don't forget a sub-70 cent dollar. Pretty rough to pay that sort of premium and THEN maybe GST and duty on your purchases. It's not the same as a generation ago when you had to go to the US to get their chocolate bars...

The Walmarts and gas stations near the Northern NY border used to have a lot of Ontario and Quebec plates. I've seen reports that February traffic across the bridges was down ~15% in February YoY.

That's an interesting anecdote. I grew up on a border town, but as a US Citizen often going up into Cananda. Without fail it was always the US border guards who were the jerks (I went to school with their kids!) and the Canadian guards who were gracious and courteous.

Given that I've NEVER had what I would call a great interaction with a US border guard, it warms my heart to hear that at least they could be kind to some one ;-)

This has been my experience as well (as a US citizen). I've crossed the US/Canadian border many times and the US guards are usually the jerks. I always dread re-entry into the US because of that.

There's a wide spectrum between being aggressive about asking for your passport and detention for weeks. While it's a slippery slope the extent to which it happens, and the extent to which prejudice is involved, varies a lot.

Are you suggesting that Swiss border patrol would have been more forgiving if I were illegally entering their country?

Well, she wasn't illegally entering the United States, so that's sort of moot.

She was. You didn't even do a modicum of research. She co-founded a hemp drink company in California and then self-assigned her own TN visa through the company she founded, which isn't allowed. Her visa was actually illegal and then she was found upon subsequent crossing. She tried to reapply and this time she was detained.

I need to determine if this is true. I had not heard of it before, and the idea she would qualify for a TN visa seemed a little thin, but the rules are so arbitrary and uneven (especially these days) who knows. Regardless this sounds like a nightmare, and to top it off is neither "DOGE-efficient" or increases US security. It's a least 4-combinations of lose-lose.

See my other reply, with receipts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413758

Hmm, I'm not an American so this is all new and pretty interesting. If you wholly or partly own a company and the company sponsors your TN, would that be OK? Or is that still 'self-sponsorship' under the regulations?

Sorry, I’m commenting on an article and don’t feel as though I should need more research than what’s written in it. Based on her account, that’s not really accurate, and I do actually trust her (and Guardian fact-checkers) more than your anonymous claims. Feel free to give sources.

Anyway: it’s still moot. What she did, even based on your account, is not illegal.

It’s not illegal to apply for TN, period. If the application is rejected, that doesn’t make the application retroactively illegal.

It’s not even illegal for a Canadian to apply for a TN at the border crossing, have their application rejected, and keep driving right into the US. I know this because it happened to me. As Canadians don’t need work permits to enter the US, entering the country wasn’t the question - only working in it.

Unless she’d previously been given paperwork that had banned her from entry to the US - and she hadn’t been - there was nothing illegal with reapplying. She was told to reapply.

Whether she did anything “wrong” is debatable, but whether she did anything illegal isn’t.

I have the best story on this - they didn't believe I wasn't Swiss, because my name is clearly Swiss and I was speaking German. My (American) passport had been amended so it took an hour and them making some calls before they were convinced I wasn't some kind of spy. Love the idea of my ancestral home not believing I wasn't one of them, even if they were quite rude about it.

Canadian here. I recall in 1991 being woken by Swiss border guards in a train carriage full of Germans and Italians. After inspecting their passports they shined the light in my face. They saw my maple leaf on my bag and asked “Est-tu Canadian” bleary eyed I replied “oui” and they said,”it’s fine, we don’t need to see your passport”. Of course 9 years later I was thrown off a train to Czechoslovakia” because they changed the visa requirements at the last minute and my “Let’s Go” guidebook was out of date.

Oh being young, stupid and crossing boarders without a clue.

"Switzerland by train and in the middle of the night being woken up by border guards with barking German shepherds asking for my passport"

What is exactly wrong here? They checked your passport and went on their way, that is how it works.

Nothing wrong. The previous poster claimed that the US Border patrol was excessively scary but my point is this happens everywhere around the world.

The part OP is scared of and points to is some border guard revoking your visa, which probably implies you losing your job and having to leave the country you live in. This is scary because it is a very big, bad outcome to be totally in the authority of a random border guard to decide. Waking out by guards and dogs barking on a train is scary in its own right the moment it happens, but we are talking about totally different things whose only intersection is "border guards" and the emotional category of "scared".

They detained her for 2 weeks, while the lights where always on. I think that is a bit more then aggressively asking for papers.

Even if that were true it doesn't justify it.

It was hilarious seeing the difference between the French and Swiss border guards on train rides.

French: laughing and talking, checking everyone's passports

Swiss: eyes scanning the car, papers please

Why do you need guard dogs to check a passport? Is it the most effective system to do sweep-checks in the middle of the night? Why not check as you're boarding or de-training? What happens if something is wrong or not aligned? Is a stressful situation the best way to conduct routine processes for anybody?

HOW shit goes down is really important. When systems reduce people to cogs in a machine they lose empathy and personal responsibility. This is why we end up with guards who know nothing, treat people like cattle, and are "just doing their job". It does not lead to good results.

Drug drogs I suspect.

Scary can be an effective deterrent against unsavory adversaries.

Of course, it's kind of the point of having borders and control, if they let anyone in without verifying, it's not even worth having a border.

Going from France to UK is like that, and before Shenzen, it was like that from EU country to EU country. When I was young, we had to wait for 2 hours with my parents while they checked everything was in order for a Spain border crossing (we were in a big RV so it makes sense).

People on HN have very soft views of the world, being too idealistic libertarian or some sort of socialist derived ideology. Most people may not be criminal but you have to process everyone crossing the border as if because otherwise it's pointless and you will never catch the criminals...

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