Border Control Protocol Failure

[Duncan Frissell]

But the question is:  How can the Canadian Border Guards tell if a "letter
from mom" is genuine?

Major protocol failure.

DCF

>CANADA
>
>[John McCaslin, columnist for the Washington Times just returned from
>vacation]
>
>U.S. passports are not required for entry into Canada, but as my 13-year-old
>daughter and I rudely discovered during our northbound journey to climb
>British Columbia's Mount Serendipity, a letter from "mom" is all but
>mandatory. Upon our arrival at the Toronto airport, a female immigration
>officer inquired if we carried a letter from my daughter's mother, giving
>permission for her to travel with her dad. (I immediately wondered if
>mothers are similarly expected to carry letters from fathers when traveling
>with their children. I expect not.) When I replied that no such letter was
>required under U.S. or Canadian law, my daughter was abruptly asked: "Does
>your mother know you are on this trip?" Despite our mutual assurances that
>mom all but packed bologna sandwiches for our much-anticipated mountain
>trek, we were led to a special holding area where a second woman
>interrogator soon launched an emotionally draining 15-minute
>cross-examination that left my daughter in tears. "Is your mother aware that
>you are on this trip?" my daughter was quizzed again. Yes. "Do you want to
>be here?" Yes. "Are you sure?" Yes. "Is this your father?" Yes. Objecting,
>for a second time, to the high degree of personal probing, I was warned that
>such outbursts could land me in the Canadian gulag. "For all I know you
>could be from Turkey," the woman said (I'm half Norwegian, half
>Scotch-Irish). "Fortunately for you, you have an accent. Do you have any
>criminal record?" At that point, seeing the tears well in my daughter's
>eyes, I reached into my carry-on pack and retrieved my White House
>correspondent's credentials, telling the officer to call George W. Bush if
>she didn't believe me. "You don't have to get rude," she snapped. "For your
>daughter's sake, you should be thanking me. Now you'll know next time."
>
>http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm