Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Arrived at Pearson yesterday afternoon, the usual 300 + people in line at passport control. I snaked around the line tapes for about 1hr 15mins. When it was my turn the IO officer asked all the normal questions, where have you been? why did you go? what did you do there? what did you spend $157 on in duty free? then she looked at my work permitt and noticed it runs out on March 30th. She asked what my status was in Canada I wanted to say you are looking at it, but refrained. She asked if we had renewed our LMO and if we had applied for PR. I said yes to both questions, she asked to see proof! I said I dont have any with me, she said she couldnt let me back in, as she has no proof that we have applied for a new LMO or PR and we may not leave at the end of March. She said when there is less than 6 months left on a work permitt then you need to carry proof with you. She said she should send me into the immigration office, and the only reason she wasnt was because the line was really long at the minute and on this occassion she would stamp my passport.Strange thing is, my husband arrived back a week before me and had no problems at all.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Blimey that was a close call :eek: Good advice for others though who are travelling with visas due to run out soon.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Not close enough, she let me in :rofl:

Seriously though, not sure if you need the paperwork or not, OH didnt even get questioned!

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

i'm sure you would have been fine if you had been sent over to the immigration office - i've been sent there for something different and they have ways of double checking stuff, just would have been a bit more of a hold up

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I'd be looking up exactly what the requirement is

After reading the problem someone had trying to get their goods to follow list stamped I suspect there are a lot of people at airports and the like who just make up the rules to suit them especially if they are having a bad day

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Last time I travelled to the US in November, I had a valid visa waiver stamped into my passport.

Drove up to your friendly US border services person, who directed me into immigration. I pointed out that I had a valid waiver in my passport. She told me she did know her job, and made me visit immigration.

Cue much scratching of heads in the office, with the question "why are you here" and a wasted hour while I waited for my place in the queue just to be told I had a valid visa.

Ho Hum. Border crossings, a lived experience.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I think the problem there is that airports no longer use the green I 94w but land borders do

Even on the us forum they can't figure out if you have the stamp in your passport then do you need the green thing in your passport and vice versa

As we both agree though it's down to the mood of the person on the day

Ben has been in a similar position , I think they were about to let him in but then they realized I hadn't so they made us both shell out the $6

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Thing is though, that when they scan your passport it should tell them that you have a valid I94. If they can manage to ask me what address I lived in when I last lived in London, even though it was a different passport, I do think that they should be able to know if I have a valid visa waiver or not...

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I agree 100% unfortunately the first rule of border control people anywhere is " never admit you are wrong"

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Know what you mean. She got pretty snarky, and I worried that I was going to be refused entry. I was just trying to be helpful after all...

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

You got that right!:)

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I had similar problems yesterday coming back into Halifax. My PR card expired in December, new one hadn't arrived before I left, so whilst I was away I went to Canadian embassy in Paris to get visa allowing me to come back. The immigration officer I saw at YHZ said she'd never seen the one off visa before, how did she know I hadn't already used it etc. Finally put a blue pen line through it and let me in but the delay meant I missed my kids citizenship ceremony :(

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

My husband had to fly to New York yesterday from Buffalo. When he came back into Canada the Officer at the border didnt batter an eyelid about the work permit only being valid until 30th March. He said to my husband, "I expect you are aware that your work permit is about to expire, I am sure you have applied to extened it" How differnt from the woman at Pearson who wanted to throw me in chains and banish me from this land! - Beats me, no consistency to anything here, regarding immigration or customs.:frown:

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I had a little shock on returning Wednesday as the immigration officer asked where my letter was from my wife stating her permission to take my son out of the country ! We were away for 2 weeks watching sport , and immigration mentioned i should have a signed letter from wife and or doctor giving me authorization to take my son with me . I mentioned we are not divorced have been married for 25 years but then got the horror stories of parents abducting their own kids ! I understand the situation but didn't realise it was such a big deal. Immigration mentioned we will be put on a register to check this doesn't happen again. Seems weird that we travel to the US regularly and it has never been mentioned before !

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

My daughter and grandson came over in 2009.The immigration officer asked her for a letter, she said she didnt have one, they asked my grandson a few questions, where was daddy? where was he going? was he happy to come to Canada with mummy? he was just 5 at the time! so last year when my younger daughter and 2 granddaughters came over, she and her partner went to a solicitor got a letter wrote up saying he was happy the girls were coming to Canada to vist me ect ect guess what, she was never asked for it and the girls were never questioned - go figure!

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Maybe the inconsistency is deliberate. If bad guys know what to expect they can prepare for it. It is oddball questions or procedures that catch out the liars.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

North America appears to be anal about this. I am amazed you have never been questioned before. Good work for lawyers though!:p

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

doesn't need to involve lawyers at all. I seem to spend half my life at work typing up letters for students travelling abroad with faculty. We just get the parents to sign.
If the faculty member is felling particularly fastidious , we get them notarized.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Yes. Keep moving the goalposts.

I had a well-odd question thrown at my by a credit card company security bod a couple of years ago.

"What's your star sign"?

I thought that quite clever.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

It is deliberate, consistency would make it far too easy for those up to no good to figure out the system, with security of any sort the best thing to do, is be inconsistent.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Hi jaqui
Bet ya didnt have the same problem getting into the U/K nobody does.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

It is so easy to enter Canada.

Decades ago I arrived at Calgary Int. airport-I had just returned from a vacation in N.Z. When I passed thru the Auckland Airport I was told that my carry-on bag was too big-it had to go in the hold. My passport was in that bag.
Arriving at Calgary, standing in line, I wondered what I would tell immigration. I told the truth, that my passport was in my checked baggage. So, immigration asked for i.d. that I was a Canadian citizen. Produced my driver's licence, and a couple of other things-not good enough said immigration-anybody can get those i.d.s. So I got out my Chargex card-yes, it was that long ago. "O.K." said the immigration lady-"credit card companies are far better at checking out residency status that we are," and that is how I entered Canada on a Chargex card for i.d.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

May have been true decades ago, doubt it would be the case now

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I'm glad you got back in. It must have been a hairy experience.

On another note, I'm fairly sure most of the immigration officers actually don't know what the hell they're talking about. Every single one of them has a different story.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

When that happened to me, all my id was in the coat that they checked. I got in on the strength of describing the route to my house. Another time the queue for immigration looked unbearably long so I walked out through the in door, trusting that my bag would eventually turn up as lost and I'd get a call to collect it, which in due course I did.

Now that I think of it, there was another time when I lost my documents to unexpected checking. "You must know I live here" I said to the officer "you must be able to see my unpaid traffic tickets". They let me in after much muttering about arrest and demands for immediate payment.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

[QUOTE=dbd33;9227947]When that happened to me, all my id was in the coat that they checked. I got in on the strength of describing the route to my house. Another time the queue for immigration looked unbearably long so I walked out through the in door, trusting that my bag would eventually turn up as lost and I'd get a call to collect it, which in due course I did.

Now that I think of it, there was another time when I lost my documents to unexpected checking. "You must know I live here" I said to the officer "you must be able to see my unpaid traffic tickets". They let me in after much muttering about arrest and demands for immediate payment.[/QUOTE]

You paid those traffic tickets yet, or is the arrest warrant still out on you? ;)

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Those ones? I expect so, but there are always more, it's like asking if you've paid your food bill.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Hmmm, I got the "we really don't want you here" treatment this week as I came back in to Calgary on an expiring work permit but it seems I got off lightly now I've read the other posts here. Ah well, ****'m.

Do they not realise that Brits are not exactly economic refugees from....erm, hang on, well, y'know?

As an aside and this being me first post, I'll take this opportunity to present myself as a 2 year lurker and say hello to everyone. Hello. Everyone.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I was once visiting family in LA from the UK (on my way back to Canada while trying to pretend I had never left). Anyway, we decided to go to TJ for the day. Drove there in my in-laws F150 (obviously). Parked and wandered over the border into Mexico. After a few hours of drinking in a bar called Buckets in TJ I realised I had no ID (except for an expired BC Health Card). No photo ID at all. Luckily by this point I was ten drinks in and the proud owner of a large sombrero (see attached pic). Somehow (pre 9-11) I was allowed back into the US by explaining "I'm with them, I'm Canadian". In retrospect I kind of wish I had been denied entry....

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

Somehow I thought you were black. :confused:

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I'd love to ask why. However, I do know that if you search using my real name then you do get some dodgy politician from the Cayman Islands. He does actually look very like me, only black and without the sombrero, obviously.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

I thought I'd had a beer with you after the symposium on Fanon and Colonial Pedagogy. Evidently not. :confused:

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

That'd be my wife you're thinking of. Can't get enough Fanon. And beer.

Re: Nearly never made it back into Canada!
 

We were in Toronto last Wednesday late afternoon on a very short stop over from Orlando to Calgary via Toronto. Originally we were supposed to have an hour and a half between flights. But due to weather conditions we arrived half an hour late, leaving one hour to clear customs and get to the gate for our connection.

When we saw the lines at Customs our hearts sank as we realized that we would never make our connecting flight. Then we saw a line that said connecting flights went down there and when we got to the end there was only two couples ahead of us. We were totally amazed to be through customs in about five minutes.

Our bags were very close to being first on the carousel, picked them up and as we were off to find our departure gate we passed a hallway with a sign stating re-checked baggage went to look and were able to give our checked bags to the nice people and they called the gate to let them know we were on our way. We made the flight on time but once again due to weather the flight was an hour and a half late getting away due to long taxi times and having to be de-iced before take-off.