Harder to cross the border

In the coming years, by 2008, any American citizen wishing to travel outside the borders will need to have a passport on their person at all times – much like one carries a driver’s license or their Sam’s Club card. While this has been the case to travel OVERSEAS (to Asia, Europe, South America), it has NOT been the case to step across the adjoining borders to neighbors Mexico and Canada.
That, my friends, is a drastic change in policy and, as has been the case in all things considered, is linked to the aftermath of 9/11. The announcement was not made by the state department but by the Office of Homeland Security, from which we see too much information about our personal lives flow.
The new policy is “designed” to keep terrorists from “exploiting the relative ease of travel in North America.” The next thing will be intrastate passports, I guess; people in Texas are automatically suspicious of ANYONE entering the state south of the Red River.
But truth be told, the policy is technically in place, at least where Canada is involved. Last summer, I spent three weeks driving through the Midwest with my wife and daughter, and one of the stops was in my old hometown of Detroit, Mich. (the answer to the trivia question of being the only spot in the U.S. which is NORTH of Canada).
It was my wife’s birthday and, on a whim, I thought it would be neat to eat dinner in a foreign land. So we headed through the U.S.-Canada tunnel to Windsor, Ontario for a nice, juicy steak.
Not so fast, we were told at the Canadian side. All we had were driver’s license and my 15-year-old daughter merely carried a student ID with her photo on it (let’s not rush her behind the wheel just yet). That vexed the Canadian border people to no end. We were herded to a holding area, had our Ford Escape swept by guards and dogs and taken to immigration officials, who admonished us for not having the proper documents.
When I mentioned the last-second aspect of the visit for a mere meal, some guy behind thick glass snapped back that next time, we needed full documents, meaning a passport. Driver’s licenses would not be adequate. I think I mumbled something about not being a “next time.”
I also noticed that people of Middle Eastern appearance, even those in Canadian licensed cars with Canadian papers, were also told to wait and had their vehicle searched. I guess skin color covers paper in a variation of that game.
At dinner, I asked the waitress about how Americans were being kept from Canada despite such attractions as casinos, restaurants, cheaper shopping and nightclubs. She said the impact on the Windsor economy could definitely be felt since 9/11 and it had gotten “worse” in the last year.
This is one of those sad effects of 9/11, where we have been forced to alter our way of life out of fear. One has to wonder how many people in Michigan, or across the U.S.-Canadian border (or those U.S.-Mexican border towns), have taken the attitude of not being a next time.
Will this eventually lead to a national ID card that will be required possession for ALL citizens, regardless of age? And where will THAT lead us to, Mr. Orwell?