Fewer Canadians are being turned away at the U.S. land border in recent months despite U.S. travel restrictions, suggests data obtained by The Canadian Press last month.
Social media is replete with Canadians proclaiming they are no longer travelling to the United States. In fact, many have cancelled all optional travel to the U.S. until “the current administration is out of the office,” as one poster noted.
Even Canada’s largest school board, the Toronto District School Board, announced plans to indefinitely stop all future field trips to the U.S. because of the uncertainty. The board, with 245,000 students, made the “difficult decision” because it believes students “should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border.”
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It’s not the only group. The Girl Guides of Canada was the first to pre-emptively cancel all travel to the U.S.
Ostensibly to address the growing negative fallout, the U.S. government released figures confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which paints a different picture of border crossings.
Refusals of Canadians at land crossings dropped 8.5 per cent between October 2016 and the end of February 2017 compared with the same five-month period a year earlier. The total number of Canadian travellers denied entry also dropped for the period: 6,875 out of 12,991,027 were refused entry, a refusal rate of 0.05 per cent. This compares with the refusal of 7,619 out of 13,173,100 Canadian travellers (a rate of 0.06 per cent) between October 2016 and February 2017.
Despite the statistics, the narrative on the ground is not as rosy.
First, part of the reduction may be attributable to the decrease in number of people self-selecting themselves by not attempting to cross. In fact, about 180,000 fewer people made the attempt during the period in question.
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Second, due to the fear created by negative reports, people may be showing up better prepared to the borders. Personally, I have fielded numerous queries about how to prepare and what documents to have. Some people have gone as far as to cull their social media posts or set up alternative (non-political and non-religious) Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
Third, the figures don’t reveal the fact that the level of scrutiny may have significantly increased with life-altering consequences to some. Nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists ran into trouble earlier this month when they were denied renewals of NAFTA-related TN work visas. After pressure from unnamed sources, the CBP reversed this interpretation and invited the denied nurses to reapply.
Also, until Ottawa objected, about 200 Canadians in the NEXUS trusted traveller program had their express-entry cards temporarily revoked. Moreover, as a result of increased scrutiny, anecdotal evidence suggests that there has been an increase in temporary detentions and invasive searches, including the searching of electronic devices.
Four, the figures may not be reflective of the disparate impact that CBP practices may be having on minorities. The figures do not provide a breakdown along ethnic, colour or religious lines. It is entirely possible that a disproportionate number of Canadians turned away or given a secondary or possibly even “extreme” vetting may be non-white or Muslim. Only time and litigation, which is an inevitability, will ultimately confirm or deny this.
To date we know from media reports of Muslims allegedly being turned away due to the existence of prayers on their mobile phones, or for being tenuously linked with religious groups or individuals (based on questions).
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This is just the beginning if the Trump administration continues with what the New York Times calls its “dark view” of Islam.
A policy implication of the “dark view” is that guilt by association will only get worse for Muslims trying to cross the border if the Ted Cruz-initiated bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a terrorist entity passes Congress.
It would be the first time a group is designated based solely on ideological grounds. Virtually every Muslim organization in North America will be linked to the MB.
Andrew March, a Yale professor, who wrote about the dangers of designating MB was detained and questioned by the CBP recently on his return from a conference in Tunisia.
Rather than taking comfort from the numbers, Ottawa must take notice of the ground realities and be prepared to defend and advocate on behalf of Canadians. Many will be depending on this for their livelihoods.
Faisal Kutty is counsel to KSM Law, an associate professor at Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana and an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. @faisalkutty.
