So long, Canada

Strict new border policies are turning Canada into a foreign country. Is this any way to treat our neighbors?

By Edward McClelland

Read more: Terrorism, Politics, Canada, News, Immigration, Edward McClelland

May 1, 2008 | WINDSOR, Ont. -- It was a snowy March night in Windsor, Ont. On the stage of Jason's Executive Lounge, the French Canadian stripper seemed to be asking herself, "Why did I bother to undress?" A royal-blue robe draped over her forearms as she danced to the low-volume disco bip-bip-bipping out of the nightclub's heavy-duty speakers. A muted floodlight cast a pale glow on her bare belly. Three men sat alone at their tables, sipping cranberry-juice cocktails and bottles of Labatt's Blue. The dancer's eyes wandered toward the door. She'd come all the way from Montreal and gotten naked for this?

It wasn't a wild night at Jason's, the club that had founded the "Windsor Ballet," the string of nudie bars whose hormonal scent once lured carloads of American men across the Detroit River to indulge in un-American activities. The drinking age in Ontario is 19. You can buy Cuban cigars at Fidel's Havana Lounge, a once busy tavern-humidor. Even prostitution is legal in the privacy of your own motel room.

"It used to be everybody went back and forth," reminisced Brad McLellan, manager of Jason's Executive Lounge. "It was, 'Where you going? Have a good time.' Then the U.S. side started tightening up after 9/11."

Five years ago, Jason's canceled its lunch specials, long popular with Detroiters off the domestic leash during business hours. Border inspections caused such long backups that customers couldn't get back to the office on time. Now the nightclub has a new headache -- the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), a law that's bringing the phrase "May I see your papers?" to America's frontiers.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security began demanding proof of citizenship -- such as a birth certificate -- of everyone who enters the United States by land. Starting in June 2009, the rules will be even stricter: a passport or similar federally approved document.

Already, Windsor has lost half its American business -- visits dropped from 7.5 million in 1999 to 3.76 million in 2004 -- and McLellan expects to lose even more. "I think the Americans will probably stop coming because it's a hassle to them unless they have a cottage [in Canada]," McLellan said. "A lot of Canadians will stop going over, too. When you get four people who want to go to a Red Wings game, and two of them have a passport, and two don't, they're going to stick together."

McLellan said some of his customers think they need a passport already. Casino Windsor is reaching out to confused Americans with a radio spot that ends, "No passport needed until June 2009."

If the tighter border were just an inconvenience for strip-club patrons, sports fans and gamblers, its effect on international relations might be no big deal. But it's disrupting everyday life in Ameri-Canadian communities, where residents have always thought of themselves as neighbors, not foreigners. The Champlain, N.Y., fire department has a mutual-aid pact with a nearby town in Quebec. Last year, the Canadians were late for a blaze because Homeland Security stopped a truck to inspect the crew's papers.

Automakers that shuttle parts between plants in the United States and Canada now stockpile them in warehouses because truck inspection times have tripled since 2000. The delays cost $11.5 billion a year, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Indian tribes are outraged about the prospect of having to carry passports to visit relatives and sacred sites across the border that divides their traditional lands. In January, trips from the United States to Canada hit their lowest mark since record-keeping began in 1972.

It's more difficult to measure the impact on American business because our weak dollar makes the border hassle worthwhile for many Canadian shoppers. Canadian visits are up 10 percent since last year, but an official with the Binational Tourism Alliance says that "15 years ago, when the exchange rate was last where it is, the numbers were three times what they are now." Overall, between 1995 and 2005, annual crossings from Canada dropped by half. Perhaps the stay-at-homes include a gentleman I met in Kingston, Ont., who told me he never goes to the states because "I don't want Uncle George looking up my butt."

In her day job as New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton has pleaded with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to cancel the passport regulations, fearing they'll damage upstate New York's already sickly economy. "I've been a leader on the WHTI issue," Clinton told Salon during a campaign stop earlier this year. "I have been opposed to what they've been trying to do. It'll interfere with recreation and tourism. I've spoken to Secretary Chertoff opposing the regulations requiring passports at the northern and southern border."

The new rules aren't just aimed at preventing another 9/11. They're also part of a crackdown on illegal immigration. But Canadians are not swimming across Lake Erie to escape socialized medicine and sane mortgage-lending laws. According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, the "vast majority" of people lying about their citizenship are trying to cross the southern border. And yet, the DHS is applying the same rules to the Canadian border as it is to the Mexican border, despite our vastly different relationships with the two countries.

"The U.S. government has been insulting in the way it's handled the border without consulting the Canadians," says Andrew Rudnick, executive director of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, a business association of U.S. and Canadian companies. "They've been insensitive to life here."

More and more, the strict new border rules appear to be a huge cultural and economic mistake. As the United States walls itself off against illegal immigration and terrorism, the relationship between Americans and Canadians will be a casualty.

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