Actually had a Mean, Arrogant Canadian Border Guard

[thetreble 19]

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!

This blows my mind. I was employed by the government during the summer in transportation. But, shite, immigration? This has really disturbed me.

[JillA 2]

Me too.... I think you need intense training and education to become a BG. Not just thrown into it for 3 months

[Krikit 1,163]

Okay, now I am flabbergasted!

[thetreble 19]

And it's not because we have a biased view of what goes into immigration, either. Would you hire a summer student as a cop? They both enforce the law!

[Krikit 1,163]

Not only that, but the border guard are protecting..... our borders!!!!!

[SapphireDreams 71]

I know a girl who was BG at Pearson for the summer. It's actually not that easy to get hired, they go through intense testing to make it and many many students do not make it through the hiring process. She told me that she actually had no power to do anything but they were just there to screen people and if they thought something was shady they would make them go to secondary. She was mostly just looking for people they could get for customs duty to make some $$.

I highly doubt that a summer student would make any major immigration decisions without someone more senior involved. Just like any government organizations, there are a lot of hoops to go through.

[Hugglebuggles 60]

Well, I can tell you that I have 3 family members who work as border guards and I applied for a summer position back in my first year of university. It wasn't easy to get hired, no, but there was also nothing I went through that made me feel as though I would have been prepared to handle immigration matters either. They make you take a test, which is very similar to an IQ test, that has a few immigration related questions, but is mostly general knowledge/perception/memory testing. As far as training goes, its a wopping 2 weeks. You are transfered between stations. So one hour you work at the both, another hour you work at customs etc. Students aren't given absolute power, no, but my friend who was transfered to the refugee unit had far to much power for someone with that little training and experience... at least, from the stories she told me. She would come to school on monday and say, "oh I turned away a family from Eritrea yesterday," as if it was something to bost about.

[Minya's wife 24]

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.

Wait, both Kikinda and Uzdin are in Serbia, right? Is her family ethnically Romanian or Hungarian? (Not sure about Kikinda, but Uzdin is a majority ethnically Romanian village in the Vojvodina region of Serbia)...we have some good friends from Uzdin, that's why I know. The Vojvodina region has significant minority popultions (Hungarians, Romanians, Slovaks, Croats and Roma among others)....I didn't know 'ethnic cleansing' was particularly significant in that area, but but to some extent or another, all of former Yugoslavia has suffered under that practice.

I'm sorry for your poor wife.

[thetreble 19]

Oh, I agree Sapphire. I am not assuming of course that these kids would be making the final decision on anything. But just the fact that they are there to look for suspicious people. I have been a government worker since I was 16 years old and I understand federal and provincial and now state level policy pretty well. I don't think I could have been in that position though.

[Flames9_RN 358]

And it's not because we have a biased view of what goes into immigration, either. Would you hire a summer student as a cop? They both enforce the law!

WELL, they actually do that I belive at ocean city!!! or some beach area in MD or VA!! They hire University kids, put them thru a police boot camp,then they walk the boardwalk area and have ful police authority, even a gun! lol

[thetreble 19]

As far as training goes, its a wopping 2 weeks

I had more training at my historical village site where I worked for 6 months.

[thetreble 19]

And it's not because we have a biased view of what goes into immigration, either. Would you hire a summer student as a cop? They both enforce the law!

WELL, they actually do that I belive at ocean city!!! or some beach area in MD or VA!! They hire University kids, put them thru a police boot camp,then they walk the boardwalk area and have ful police authority, even a gun! lol

We have that, too, at the Jersey shore. They are volunteer police. But they are not given weapons as far as I know. If they are, that's insane.

[Flames9_RN 358]

I was suprised they armed the,. but on the news segment, they showed them at the gun range and stated in all the yrs they have run the program, the rental cop has never shot anyone

[thetreble 19]

Rent-a-cop.

[Krikit 1,163]

I've got to stop reading this thread. I'm running out of adverbs!