Jogger accidentally crosses U.S. border from B.C., gets detained for 2 weeks

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/jogger-accidentally-crosses-u-s-border-from-b-c-gets-detained-for-2-weeks-by-authorities-1.4717060

by cpncrunch • 8 years ago

40 37 8 years ago

cbc.ca

curtis• 8 years ago

I can't help but feel like there's some missing information here. One piece of information that's missing from the headline but not the article is that the jogger was not a Canadian citizen, which may have complicated things, but doesn't seem like it should have complicated things so much that she needed to be detained for two weeks.

One possibility is that the jogger not only wasn't a Canadian citizen, but may not have been a fluent english-speaker either.

This still seems screwed up though.

mindcrime4• 8 years ago

We really need to figure out how to get to a stateless, borderless society, and end this kind of absurdity. There is NO justification, none, zero, zilch, nada, for somebody being detained for two weeks for crossing an imaginary line while running on a beach. It's not just absurd, it's beyond absurd.

jostonde• 8 years ago

Sometimes reading such news I wonder if all our collective common sense is definitely gone.

djohnston• 8 years ago

i agree that the long term we probably will lose borders, but i can't see how that happens from here without extensive blood shed

Someone1234• 8 years ago

It wasn't like this pre-9/11. They would have just politely asked her to return to Canada.

monksy2• 8 years ago

Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek. (There are very good reasons for having countries and borders.. you have to draw the line somewhere)

The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that)

spankalee• 8 years ago

you have to draw the line somewhere

Can you back up that assertion?

mindcrime4• 8 years ago

Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek.

Why do you say so? There's nothing inherently "good" or "just" about nation states. The only nominal support I can find for such an idea is rooted in applying something like Dunbar's Number[1]. But arguably appealing to that is committing a variation of the naturalistic fallacy[2].

The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that)

But who's going to conduct such an inquiry? The government? Oh, wait. It's the old "who watches the watchers?" problem. Me, I don't trust the government to provide oversight of itself. For the same reason I don't trust police to police themselves when it comes to excessive force cases, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

Broken_Hippo• 8 years ago

"you have to draw the line somewhere"

For taxes and things, sure. For oppression of peoples? Probably. To keep undesirable countries citizens out? Sure. To have an excuse not to care about what goes on in other countries? Most definitely.

Travel and freedom of movement and work and choice in where you wind up living? Not really.

colemannugent2• 8 years ago

...crossing an imaginary line...

But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them. She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries that hold wildly different world views. Until such a stateless utopia manifests itself we still need these lines.

I agree on the two week detention being absurd. It should have taken less than a few hours to sort things out.

mindcrime4• 8 years ago

But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them.

Sorry, but I can't help but read that as "it's not an imaginary line, it's an imaginary line".

She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries

A case can be made that "sovereign countries" are imaginary constructs that should be abolished, along with their imaginary lines of demarcation.

I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but what I'm saying is that elevating that line to some concrete status is rooted in a worldview which has no objective reality. We can abolish borders, we just need to come together and muster up the will to do it. Which means, in part, finding solutions to all the problems the statists will use as arguments for preserving their lines.

pwinnski2• 8 years ago

She didn't cross a river, or a mountain, or a wall, or a fence. The line is definitely imaginary. It is also real.

xenadu02• 8 years ago

Except for 100+ years the line was mostly imaginary. There are towns that cross the border. The idea that we need such border security is laughable and a flimsy excuse for expansion of government powers.

dsfyu404ed• 8 years ago

Open borders or good social safety nets, pick one.

edit: if there's some way that we can pick both please feel free to tell everyone.

ac29• 8 years ago

2 weeks is a long time to be detained, but the problem is that she was traveling with no ID, no passport, and wasn't a citizen of either the US or Canada. She couldn't be discharged back into Canada immediately, because they had to confirm she was allowed to be there.

I have a feeling if she was a Canadian citizen, this would have been a slap on the wrist, and she would've been let back into Canada within hours, if not immediately.

seba_dos1• 8 years ago

Thankfully I live in the Schengen Area and crossing the border is usually no bigger deal than going to another town (aside of language on signs being different). After a while it becomes so natural that I had a very stressful moment once in the middle of a car trip from Poland to Croatia (Dubrovnik) after realizing that we will have to cross through Bosnia (for only a few kilometres actually) which is not in EU and that I haven't bought a passport. Fortunately, turned out that ID was enough to pass, although that wasn't guaranteed (and that Croatia, despite of being in EU, isn't actually in Schengen yet :P however, ID is officially enough there. It still meant that there were ridiculous border checks though).

asdsa53252• 8 years ago

Or we can just have common sense about a jogger accidentally crossing? Why do you jump to stateless/borderless? Let me tell you, that's absurd.

mindcrime4• 8 years ago

Let me tell you, that's absurd.

Oh?

lord_ring_11• 8 years ago

Why is boundary around your house also not an absurdity? Can few people stay there tonight or permanently. Tgey might not respect you though.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

>Roman, a citizen of France who had travelled to Canada to visit her mother in B.C. and work on her English, didn't have any government-issued ID or travel permits on her.

Ok. Free legal advice: If you a citizen of country A visiting relatives in country B, don't go anywhere near country C without your passport. US authorities acted very reasonably here. Two weeks is not a long time considering she needed confirmation from multiple countries.

kapnobatairza• 8 years ago

I agree. It's not like we have some sort of magic communication system that can be used to send and receive information. It would take multiple days for a raven to fly from the USA to Canada to France.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

Funny, but look at it from the perspective of those actually involved. Canada doesn't have a magic spreadsheet of all the people currently allowed in the country. Nor does the US, or France. They have to check up on visas and such.

And because this person is currently in custody, they cannot be released until they know there aren't any outstanding warrants in any of the three countries involved.

But this does not avoid the fact she violated the law. In legal terms, she deliberately crossed the boarder. She didn't knowingly violate the law, but this isn't someone forced across the boarder against their will. "I didn't see the marker" isn't actually an excuse. Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. That decision too take time, and won't start until such a person's identity and status has already been assured.

gojomo2• 8 years ago

Two weeks is not reasonable for someone who presumably could've walked over & back, at an official crossing, with instantaneous review of her passport/eligibility.

Sure, an improper entry adds some complication. But if her story checks out – passport available for review, low signage at the crossing, in jogging wear, video shows no suspicious packages, well-established addresses/education/career – then perhaps 24-48 hours would be reasonable.

I'm not uniquely blaming US border authorities here – if Canada wouldn't take her back within 24 hours, as someone with proper documents who had just previously been there legally, they share the blame in creating an unreasonable system.

5555624• 8 years ago

Except she "didn't have any government-issued ID or travel permits on her." Her passport was not available for review.

They let her contact her mother, who brought her passport. All that was left was for Canada to say she was in Canada legally.

So, Canada does deserve part of the blame. The article says her mother rushed to the detention center with her passport and was told to submit it to Immigration Canada. I have no idea why it took two weeks for officials on both sides to determine she could go back to Canada; but, it sounds like there was some sort of delay on the Canadian side. Of course, neither side will comment on the case.

eesmith• 8 years ago

I am a US citizen. Once on a visit to Basel I walked without a passport to France and then to Germany, and then back to Switzerland.

No one stopped me. Thanks be to the Schengen Agreement.

Friends of mine, in the glory days of the 1990s, went canoeing in the Boundary Waters. They went to the Canada side and 'claimed' some island for the US in jest.

They didn't get stopped, much less detained for two weeks.

In the same glory days, people on the Maine/Canada border would frequently pass back and forth without a problem. Eg, to get gas in the US, where it was cheaper.

That's why there are still things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_Free_Library_and_Opera... . Which, you'll notice, allows people from Canada to enter the door on the US side without going through customs.

So it is not unreasonable that there can be flexibility on what it means to cross the border.

Hnrobert42• 8 years ago

How is this hacker news?

pissedOff2018• 8 years ago

This looks more like a case of entrapment. There was no indication that there is a line not to be crossed and this is a large public beach.

It makes me angry to see a guest of our country (yes Canada) treated this way by our neighbor. You people have to get your shit together and stop treating your friends like criminals.

luckydata• 8 years ago

Sounds like the kind of stunts Iran pulls on tourists from time to time when they try to make a political statement.

Jogger accidentally crosses U.S. border from B.C., gets detained for 2 weeks

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