I thought you wrote Mexican then I realised it was 'Merican.

Pisstaking British sense of humour doesn't go down well with many North Americans.

Top work FL , virtual pint on its way over . Keep it up

I was referring to the US Border staff.

I have been to all but 9 of the States, In general the further South and the Further from the Atlantic or Pacific you go the worse they are. I have met many Yanks who are educated and up for a laugh. Its such a massive and diverse country that it is hard to put them all in one basket. Been all over Florida and met some real salt of the earth people. Sadly for every one that you meet you meet another that is a prat. Same as everywhere.

The line that a lot of them throw at you is 'We saved your ass in WW2'

Usually respond with ' 6 million Jews exterminated, 26m Russians dead, What you experienced on 9/11 we went through that every day in the Blitz etc etc SO.... How much credit do you really want for turning up late????

Throw History at them it tends to shut them up

You're so right about the history thing. A lot of Americans don't even know much about their own history, sometimes not even the most basic things like George Washington being the first president.

But I've met quite a few intelligent Americans when I used to live there. Also, there are many prominent American intellectuals in the really broad and diverse contemporary American media. But darn it, a lot of the really dumb and loopy ones totally make me cringe at times.

No kidding! We have a thread for it in the "south of the border" forum.

No South, no Faulkner.

The first thing to do when you get to secondary is to ask for a comment card that you can fill in while you wait, then just sit there and stare at them a bit and doodle on it a lot, trust me, then they get much more helpful.

My grandmother used to say that she would never visit the US because of this attitude, she used to say, "they didn't even show up until 1942."

My own personal favourite is the way they spin the history of the Revolutionary War, or as it's called in Canada (and the Commonwealth) the American War of Independence.

Which was really more about expanding west into the Ohio Valley and seizing the land from the Indians than anything to do with taxation. The British didn't want the colonists to do it, in case it started a war with France.

In fairness I've made the point about the US looking at the Revolutionary War through rose-tinted spectacles to many Americans, and they usually agree with me, especially the older ones who remember when history lessons didn't gloss over the facts so much. I even had one point out to me that Americans say they won the War of 1812 when they obviously didn't, which did surprise me as that is the usual drivel and is even printed in the USCIS citizenship test manual.

As far as CBP goes, I find the ones at pre-clearance are okay, I think it's because they live in Canada so they know we're not all terrorists, but if you get a new guy who just started at a land border, they can be pretty ridiculous.

Anyway FL was going on about the NEXUS office, the CBSA lady at the NEXUS office at YYC is one of the worst jobsworths I've ever met, I've seen various CBP inspectors looking at her with a look of amazement on their faces with the way she treats some people.

Unless a history buff who has spent a lot of time learning on one's own about history and doing major research at the university level, history is not a subject schools spend a ton of time on, they gloss quickly over it and only point out major events.

My grade 12 history the only high school level history class was 1 semester long so 3 1/2 months or so roughly. And they skip a lot in the books of course as well, its very basic, and some reason the booked stopped at WW2 but the book could have been from 1950 for all I know...lol...I went to school in the 80's and 90's when education was being gutted in California.

We didn't learn at my school about anything regarding Canada, or war of 1812, the focus was largely on Mexico and Mexican Wars, but being in San Diego, Canada has 0 influence on how California developed and so its understandable why we didn't spend time on anything about Canada.

I did have 1 year on Mexican American history, but 60% of the students at my school were Mexican, so again makes sense.


As for US Customs, never had an issue with any officers yet, lucky if they even talk, most of the time they mention how they wish they were in San Diego when I say where I am going, and spend most of the time on the nice weather...lol

Coming back to Canada has been 50/50, I've gotten some pretty rude and unfriendly Canada Border Guards.

That's cos your going on a US passport, they can't deny you entry, they don't need to ask much questions ... Canada border no matter what status you have they can get a bit ridiculous over the "stuff that could be taxable" but usually they are pretty flexible unless you get a jobsworth.

Going into the US my grandparents for some reason are targeted for the "we're gonna randomly strip down your car and not put it back together for you" search. More than once. Its never happened to me

If you're thinking of ever using your Canadian passport at US customs instead of your Canadian one, don't do it if you live near Vancouver. I know an American-born guy who decided to test whether his experience would be different under a Canadian passport (after hearing his Canadian friends complaining about US CBP) and the experience turned out to be downright scary. On the topic of re-entering Canada, he said the same about Canadian border guards (some nice, some rude).

If I'm not mistaken, it's a law in the US that if you are a US citizen you MUST enter/leave the US using your US passport.

Possibly because you're too young to have a license and own a car? Sorry, couldn't resist

We've been across twice, had the car emptied once. They were actually friendlier the time they emptied the car. I'm vaguely interested to try it with a Canadian passport now I have one.

I suppose I've crossed a thousand times by road, sometimes using a Canadian passport, sometimes a British one, with passengers holding a variety of documents. Nothing interesting has ever happened on entering the US though once the officer was really quite curt and I didn't much care for his manner. Another time my dog set off some sort of explosives warning alarm and had to be personally scanned, the officers seemed mildly amused and were very friendly about it. I've had the same calm experience arriving in the US by boat and by private plane. I'm antagonistic by nature and a routine flouter of minor laws so I wonder what posters have to do to generate an interest in searching their cars.

Coming the other way I was once a passenger in a car when the driver was refused entry to Canada but that didn't involve any drama either. Since the car wasn't coming in, it wasn't searched. We drove back whence we came.

Really? Antagonistic? You?

To the second part, I honestly have no idea. Staff training day perhaps? Quota to fill? We were just going to catch a plane from Detroit, just us, baby, couple of suitcases. Showed them the plane tickets. The car bit was actually quicker than the line up inside.