Back from Canada without a passport
Jun. 29th, 2019 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamshark Turns out that you can indeed get in and out of Canada without a passport, at least at the Port Huron, Michigan, border crossing. On the way into Canada the border guard (who looked to be about 17 years old, and was trying very hard to look stern) asked for passports. We said, "We have birth certificates and drivers licenses" and handed them over. He took them without any complaint, but did ask a few questions. Where are you coming from? Where are you going? What are you planning to do in Niagara Falls? [Um... look at the falls?] Then he asked when was the last time we had been in Canada and we started arguing with each other about that. This exhausted his patience and he just sent us on through.
On the way back we came through the Nexus Lane with our Global Entry Cards. This would have worked slick as a whistle if Richard hadn't been driving. He can never figure out how to use the simplest technology and was completely unable to get the machines to read our cards (I think he may have been holding them backwards... who knows?). The agents in the booth 25 feet ahead of the reader were apparently yelling instructions that we didn't hear, being old and kind of deaf. Finally one of them came marching back to our car, grabbed the cards, and waved us up to the booth. They asked a few basic questions and snarled at us for being unable to figure out the card reader. But they seemed to think the GE cards were perfectly adequate documentation and never even mentioned passports. No searches or major delays or anything.
On the way back we came through the Nexus Lane with our Global Entry Cards. This would have worked slick as a whistle if Richard hadn't been driving. He can never figure out how to use the simplest technology and was completely unable to get the machines to read our cards (I think he may have been holding them backwards... who knows?). The agents in the booth 25 feet ahead of the reader were apparently yelling instructions that we didn't hear, being old and kind of deaf. Finally one of them came marching back to our car, grabbed the cards, and waved us up to the booth. They asked a few basic questions and snarled at us for being unable to figure out the card reader. But they seemed to think the GE cards were perfectly adequate documentation and never even mentioned passports. No searches or major delays or anything.
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Date: 2019-06-30 04:27 pm (UTC)K.
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