The northern border is effectively closed to non-Canadians who wish to enter the USA from Canada.
And no one has noticed.
The United States has, it seems, achieved something remarkable: the de-facto or practical closure of a border without any official announcement.
How?
For some time, the US has had a system whereby all non-immigrants who were seeking to enter this country under a visa have to interview for the visa at a U.S. consulate. This rule in itself is unremarkable but has been used as the foundation for the prevention of free movement to the USA from Canada.
Those wishing to book an appointment for a visa at a US consulate in Canada must do so online. However, over 60 recent attempts to book an appointment at any consulate in Canada (Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal) using the online booking system https://www.nvars.com/Production/UserLogin.aspx reveals that the system does not in fact have any appointments to offer.
Rather, the would be traveler receives the following message (tailored to the particular consulate)
There are no appointments currently available. Vancouver allows visa appointment bookings only up to 8 weeks in advance. All appointments have been booked for the next 8 weeks. Appointments are added regularly, please revisit the site to confirm availability for future dates.
On the surface, this appears innocent enough, until you also read from the FAQ section of the same website
Why can’t I find available appointments even if I scroll the calendar forward several months?
You are not able to find available appointments this far in the future, because the consulates do not allow you to schedule that far in advance. Each consulate only allows appointment bookings a specified number of weeks in advance. Here is a listing of the maximum time in advance that you can book an appointment for each consulate:
Montreal 6 weeks in advance
Ottawa 6 weeks in advance
Calgary 8 weeks in advance
Toronto 6 weeks in advance
Quebec City 3 weeks in advance
Halifax 6 weeks in advance
Vancouver 8 weeks in advance
In other words, all appointments up to eight weeks are booked, and no booking is allowed beyond eight weeks. The message does not change as one tries to book day after day.
For the confused traveler, the FAQ page also offers the following;
Why are there no available appointments showing in the Consulate calendars? Is there a technical problem with the website?
This is not caused by a problem with the website. Appointments are in high demand, and are usually booked very quickly once they become available. New appointments are added to the website randomly between the hours of 7am and 10pm Eastern time, so we recommend that you check the website as often as possible to increase your chances of finding an appointment.
That would all be very well if it worked, but it doesn’t. How can a business traveler be expected to sit at his computer for weeks on end, logging in 100s of times in the hope of finding an appointment flash up? Of course he can’t. And at least one who has done just that found no appointment flash up at all.
A call to the $1.89 a minute help line yielded no explanation.
Perhaps somebody somewhere is getting an appointment, but if so, the appointments are so few that only a handful a day are being given out, and the Canadian border is thus a closed border with limited exceptions, rather than an open border with proper security measures.
But it is much worse than even this: people who have already been approved for visas to work legally in the USA are prevented from reentering from Canada..
Again, how?
One of the most extraordinary decisions, presumably taken by the DHS-CIS (Department of Homeland Security – Citizenship and Immigration Services, the new INS), has been to require people legally in the USA with approved visa status but traveling to Canada to re-interview at a US consulate in Canada for the visa they have already obtained typically by paying $100s or $1000s and by submitting 100s of pages of documents before they re-enter the USA. To put this another way, the United States, alone in the world, can deny a visa after it has already approved it without any change in circumstance.
People affected by this new rule include even senior international business managers, legally in the USA on the L1A visa, which allows them to manage an international business here in an executive capacity. While the very purpose of their visa is to enable them to run such a business in the USA, if, in the course of so doing, they leave for Canada, they will not be able to return for at least eight weeks (because they need to book an appointment that far out) or they may never be able to return (because no appointment is available to them).
Remarkably, then, the border is for practical purposes closed to legal non-permanent residents of the USA, thousands of whom have lived here for years.
This administrative overkill, (or is it more sinister?) is disrupting lives and destroying businesses and, in both respects, is simply inhumane, directed entirely toward legal travelers who are trying to play by the rules.
Robin Koerner, Publisher of Watching America.com, the site that translates foreign news about the USA from all over the world, is a legal non-immigrant resident of the USA.
Robin Koerner is a British-born citizen of the USA, who currently serves as Academic Dean of the John Locke Institute. He holds graduate degrees in both Physics and the Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). He is also the founder of WatchingAmerica.com, an organization of over 100 volunteers that translates and posts in English views about the USA from all over the world.
Robin may be best known for having coined the term “Blue Republican” to refer to liberals and independents who joined the GOP to support Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency in 2012 (and, in so doing, launching the largest coalition that existed for that candidate).
Robin’s current work as a trainer and a consultant, and his book If You Can Keep It , focus on overcoming distrust and bridging ideological division to improve politics and lives. His current project, Humilitarian, promotes humility and civility as a basis for improved political discourse and outcomes.