I have an old college friend whom I talk to every few years. I'll call him "Brad" because I don't know if he wants his name used here. He was in my area for business, so we met up for a few hours yesterday. It was the first time I had seen him in person in over 20 years.
Anyway, he told me about a pretty disturbing story at the Canadian border which surprised me.
Brad lives in Yakima, Washington. He has crossed into British Columbia many times, though always from I-5 toward Vancouver. That is a very heavily used border crossing, and they have always just asked him a few questions regarding his reason to visit Canada and let him go on his way.
In 1991, during the time I knew him in college, Brad was stealing cable. He had completely free cable and every single pay channel, and could even watch pay-per-view for free. After a bitter breakup with his girlfriend, she called up the cable company and reported him (or at least that's what he said happened) and was caught doing it. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, paid some restitution of like $1000, and was given 2 years probation. He never served any prison time, aside from being in a holding cell when initially arrested and charged. Brad completed his probation and has never been arrested since.
Brad got a divorce last year, and I guess he's been doing online dating. Somehow he ended up talking to a girl from Penticton, BC (never heard of it before), which is located in the southern-center of the province. It was a 300 or so mile drive from Yakima, and the first time Brad had ever crossed the border there. In October, Brad went to go see her.
Apparently the border patrol station over there is lightly used, and the officers there are bored. They took his passport, told him "hold on", and ran it through the computer. He said they had never done that before at the Vancouver-area border crossing. After about 10 minutes, they told him to get out of the car and come into the station. At that point, they started questioning him.
"Have you ever been arrested before?"
Brad told me that he was at first considering lying about it, and then realized that this had to be about what they found from 1991, so he said yes.
"Were you convicted?"
He said yes.
Then they asked him to explain the crime. He told them that he was a broke college student who stupidly stole cable service for free. He kept repeating that he never had any problems with the law since then, and it was 23 years ago, but they weren't impressed. They also asked if he had been arrested but not convicted of anything since then, and he said no.
"So no traffic tickets, either?", they asked.
Brad told them that yes, he's had traffic tickets but never anything serious.
After looking some more shit up on the computer, they explained everything to him.
Apparently Canada has very strict laws regarding allowing "criminals" across the border, even ones with one-time, minor offenses, and even if the visit to the country is just for the day.
The told Brad that he was actually banned from Canada for 12 years, from 1991-2003. This included his two years probation and a 10-year period following it! They told him that his misdemeanor was not quite serious enough for a lifetime ban, "but it was close". What?!
Brad had entered Canada numerous times during those years, but the busy Canadian border patrol never bothered to run his record.
I had never heard of anything like this before. And I thought US Border Patrol agents were hard-asses!
Here is an article from 2012 about something similar, where tourist-oriented Canadian businesses near the Minnesota border are frustrated due to tons of customers being turned away before getting there:
http://www.startribune.com/sports/ou...140403093.html
The article focuses on DUIs, which I more understand, because drunk drivers can cause a legitimate hazard to Canadian citizens. But Brad was banned for 12 years from Canada for stealing cable for himself in the US??? Seriously?
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Originally Posted by Hockey Guy
