Actually had a Mean, Arrogant Canadian Border Guard

[bowflex 0]

Wow that was an insane change of pace this last weekend Lol. My wife and I were going to visit her family on Saturday through the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel and got called into secondary like every single time and were called into a nice little interview room that very much reminded me of the room in the Montreal Consulate. The lady sits down on the other side of the window and proceeds to inform us of my wife's status in Canada (her parents are now permanent residents there but my wife came over to the States on the CR-1 visa back in June of 2007 so she was removed from their case). While holding my wife's American permanent resident card she proceeded to tell my wife that she should know that she can't apply for status in Canada ever again since she removed herself from the process before. We let her know that we were made aware of that and it was okay as my wife will eventually go for citizenship in the States when she's eligible.

The women then felt like telling us that my wife's family shouldn't have been allowed to enter the States (back in 1991) or Canada (back in 2004) anyway since there was "nothing going on in Yugoslavia at that time" and that it would be like her, as a Canadian, deciding to move to California and claiming that she was a refugee. Now I'm very aware that saying anything with an attitude or something like that could only cause problems later for us when trying to visit her family so we both just sat there and took her onslaught of uneducated garbage, but it's just funny how someone like that wouldn't know how disrespectful they were being.

I've been finding it more and more amazing lately how some people think that they're more deserving or important than someone else just because their parents got liquored up and decided to have unprotected sex on a certain place of land within some made-up borders LOL. My poor wife broke down into tears a few hours later while we were all eating dinner since this kinda garbage has been happening to her and her family for the entire 18 years since they left Europe and it just really boiled me up. Sorry for the long post, had to vent

[trailmix 77]

That's really too bad that you and your wife had to sit through that bowflex - totally unnecessary.

[bowflex 0]

That's really too bad that you and your wife had to sit through that bowflex - totally unnecessary.

I usually can just blow it off as we're called into secondary on the American-side everytime but it was new getting the attitude from the "nice" side of the border haha.

[Flames9_RN 358]

Canada hires a lot of Students to act as Border agents during the summer!! Sorry about ur bad incident

[thetreble 19]

That's ridiculous.

My best friend is from the former Yugoslavia and came to Canada in 1994. They went through SUCH hardships to even get out of what is now Bosnia and how dare someone make any comments about what years had conflict vs what years didn't.

I would report her if you could, bowflex.

Canada hires a lot of Students to act as Border agents during the summer!! Sorry about ur bad incident

Are you serious? We have summer students in our office and some of them can hardly put 2 and 2 together and they are leaving it up to student's to decide on someone's immigration fate?

[milimelo 4,193]

Where is your wife from originally? The war first started in Slovenia (kind of a blitzkrieg there as they kicked Yugoslav army out in early 1991 in maybe two weeks time) then in Croatia - 1991 and then Bosnia - March 1992. I have no idea why would a Canadian immigration officer take it out at your wife - I hope she is ok now.

Edited July 13, 2009 by milimelo

[Krikit 1,163]

I am so sorry, Bowflex. We all know that was totally unnecessary and uncalled for. Your poor wife has endured so much.

[bowflex 0]

That's ridiculous.

My best friend is from the former Yugoslavia and came to Canada in 1994. They went through SUCH hardships to even get out of what is now Bosnia and how dare someone make any comments about what years had conflict vs what years didn't.

I would report her if you could, bowflex.

Canada hires a lot of Students to act as Border agents during the summer!! Sorry about ur bad incident

Are you serious? We have summer students in our office and some of them can hardly put 2 and 2 together and they are leaving it up to student's to decide on someone's immigration fate?

I really wanted to try to find a book at the Windsor library and go back showing her about the genocide that was going on, or maybe go with the fact that America was bombing the living ####### out of that country, but I just decided I'd enjoy some barbeque and curse her under my breath later in the day LOL.

I'm always very wary of reporting immigration people now since we did that with the Consul that completely mistreated us in Montreal. She ended up creating a separate alien number for my wife after she had the visa issued and now that is causing SO MUCH problems for us now. When we're called into secondary and they're reading through my wife's file they always bring up that we had our Senator file a complaint against her and they laugh. The guards are usually pretty nice but it's rough for sure haha

Where is your wife from originally? The war first started in Slovenia (kind of a blitzkrieg there as they kicked Yugoslav army out in early 1991 in maybe two weeks time) then in Croatia - 1991 and then Bosnia - March 1992. I have no idea why would a Canadian immigration officer take it out at your wife - I hope she is ok now.

My wife is originally from Kikinda and grew up in Uzdin until first grade when her family moved to the States (1991). Her father was in the army as mandated but once the cleansing really went into the mainstream and was being required by the army they got out as fast as possible.

I am so sorry, Bowflex. We all know that was totally unnecessary and uncalled for. Your poor wife has endured so much.

Thank you very much for this My wife always says that people give her so much grief because she's so tiny (5 2ish at the most haha). I told her she just needs to start learning how to walk around on stilts Lol

[JillA 2]

Canada hires a lot of Students to act as Border agents during the summer!! Sorry about ur bad incident

Really!? You'd think the amount of time to train a BG would take the whole summer. I can't believe that!

[warlord 72]

Border guards are notorious of saying things like that, like "There was nothing going on there". They don't even know themselves, but they just use that for intimidation purposes to make you sweat. I hear about that quite often where they'll pull something dumb out like that just to get a scare from the people, when this happens sometimes the person might divuldge some important things that they were hiding from the border guard under stress. So it's a common tactic to use.

I knew one of my friends in college worked at the Detroit/Windsor bridge in his summers off school...

[thetreble 19]

If someone 18 year old kid told me I was inadmissible to the United States, I'd probably kick him in the balls.

[Krikit 1,163]

If someone 18 year old kid told me I was inadmissible to the United States, I'd probably kick him in the balls.

Had he had any.

[The_Dude 1,142]

You mean America doesn't have an absolute monopoly on arseholes?

[Krikit 1,163]

Hard to believe, I know.

[Hugglebuggles 60]

Canada hires a lot of Students to act as Border agents during the summer!! Sorry about ur bad incident

Really!? You'd think the amount of time to train a BG would take the whole summer. I can't believe that!

Absolutely! I had a friend 2nd year of university who got a job at the Peace Bridge working as an immigrations officer in the refugee unit. She had the power to approve or deny refugee claims and had little to no outside background or knowledge about the countries and cases she was dealing with. Not to be completely mean, but this was a girl who barely passed, couldn't write if her life depended on it, and ended up having to take a 3 year pass because she flunked out of her honours. Its all very arbitrary!

Sorry you had to deal with that Bowflex. That guard was obviously very unaware of the turmoil in the Bulkans during the early 1990's.