scrubbedexpat091

There is.

I don't have a Canadian passport, as I am only a permanent resident, so only passport I have is US so no worries for me.

Steve_

It's always geography that gets me, I have family who live in California, anyway one of them told me in school they spent a lesson on the UK and the teacher didn't have a clue about it and she had to keep correcting her.

And there was that soccer game the other day and some enterprising reporter decided to ask the crowd if they knew where Belgium is, and virtually nobody did.

Ah yes, that titan of countries... that king among kingdoms... (because only a country like that could possibly beat the US at anything)... BELGIUM. I wondered how many minds the reporter would have blown if she'd pointed out that Belgian waffles aren't actually Belgian.

Gozit

Were they friendly enough to put it back the way they found it?

Dashie

Actually yes. I'd heard horror stories to the contrary from others though.

Gozit

Wow, that's a change... Nice to hear

FlyingDutchman6666

Neither are Belgian buns. The Belgians call that particular pastry a "round swiss (bun)". I wonder what the Swiss call it. A British bun?

Former Lancastrian

Thank god the 24th of August is on a Sunday so no diplomatic incident will take place that day though I can't promise anything won't transpire on the 22nd or 25th.
British troops set fire to the White House — History.com This Day in History — 8/24/1814

scrubbedexpat091

Geography was cut out of a lot of curriculum back in the 80's and 90's and some till spend little if any time on it. It was a big issue when I was in high school in the mid to late 90's, they basically cut back to just english, math, science, and PE with a handful of short 1 semester classes for other things.

I can't recall any in-depth geography lessons in any grade. I can't name every country in the world, and can't point out the exact location of every country, but I can do the majors, and get pretty close to the right part of the world for most unless its a small obscure rarely heard of place.

Teachers based on my 12 years of California education experience, rarely are well versed in all the subjects they are expected to teach. I had math teachers who couldn't understand math well enough to teach it, science teachers who never taught science or even education in the sciences, Spanish teacher who wasn't fluent in Spanish, an English teacher who taught PE for 34 years and was displaced when they cut the PE department so she ended up teaching English and really had no idea what she was doing.

My high school was a 2 tier school, those who tested high on Achievement Tests with good grades and good chance at college acceptance were placed into the better classes and better performing teachers, and those who scores lower, and less likely to be accepted into a college ended up in the basic general education classes to meet state graduation requirements, but they were no concerned with the bottom half actually learning anything, the school just wanted to say they had a high completion rate and low drop out rate.

My school in 1st to 6th was an experimental school, the experiment failed and was never taken into other schools and dropped eventually, but my entire 1st to 6th grade was a big experiment but the learning results were poor, and I am sure many students suffered as a result.

bc_guy

If there is such a law, then I guess my friend must have unknowingly broken it that one time. After that experience with CBP, he always uses his US passport when entering the US for any reason. I'm curious as to why there's a law stating that you must use your US passport each time.

beckiwoo

Probably because if they know you are a US citizen it's quicker through passport control - not so many questions!

Although I met a guy (American citizen) in Seattle last year, who had spent some time travelling through Europe. On his return to LAX, he was quizzed by border officers about what he had been doing there and why he went there, how long he had been there etc. - maybe having an American passport doesn't exempt you from the inquisition

scrubbedexpat091

They get suspicious of certain countries, if you have spent a significant amount of time travelling, frequent travels to certain areas and so on.

For the first few years i was in Canada, the officers were very interested in me, but now they seem to have the knowledge I live in Canada, and I am lucky if they even ask me a question.

FlyingDutchman6666

What's a San Diegan doing in Canada?

SchnookoLoly

That's my birthday. :P

scrubbedexpat091

Used to be married to a Canadian who didn't want to move there.

My girlfriend now would gladly move there though, but she has some health issues and we would be financially unable to afford healthcare for her there.

Steve_

You don't have to use your US passport, you can use anything in WHTI, until recently Americans could use things like their birth certificate.

This is one of the things that always makes me roll my eyes at the UK because I remember I used to see in travel programmes on TV they would imply Americans were not well travelled because the number of people who had passports was so low per capita. Being British and having to have this stupid red booklet to go anywhere (mainly because you need it to get back into the UK) they seemed to think the rest of the world was the same.

However not every country has the same passport fetish that the UK has and Americans could travel the whole of North America without any special ID until recently.

Anyway the reason for WHTI officially was anti-fraud, because it was impossible for CBP inspectors to know what every birth certificate ever issued by any given jurisdiction looked like. Puerto Rican birth certificates were so routinely forged by Mexicans that Puerto Rico had to re-issue them all.

So now Americans have to use a US passport, EDL, EIC, GE card, or NEXUS/SENTRI/FAST card to enter the US.