Hi Everyone,
I have been meaning to write this for a few days. We crossed in Saturday, but it was an adventure to do so, and I think I'm only recovering now.
The crossing part was easy - we drove to Windsor/Detroit, was taken into secondary, had to leave the cat and our cell phones in the car, went into the little building, they scanned our passports (there were issues with that but they were technical because they had a new system that only one person knew how to run, so it was giving everyone problems, including the family in front of us who were also activating their family visas at the same time), they reviewed my list of goods, and my teenager and I (and the cat) were admitted.
However, my car was not.
There were debates back and forth on VJ about whether or not one can drive one's vehicle down and import the vehicle later instead of at the time of crossing. I know we should have probably called the border to ask first, but I was in such a state of flux about packing and selling my house, I figured we could just tell them we were importing the vehicle later and deal with it.
Wrong.
In order to admit a personal vehicle into the US, it must actually be importable. That's why you need that letter from your car's manufacturer. Which of course I didn't have. When I told the border guard I thought I could do it all later and just drive the car down to get down there, he said, "This is why you always call first. You can't just drive it down. It is your property and so you are importing it and because it's a vehicle, it is subject to certain taxes you would have to pay prior to entry, regardless of whether or not you're doing the paperwork today."
Since my car was an old beater (a 2012 car with over 243k on it) and didn't have an OEM Tire Pressure Monitor, it would not be road certifiable in Texas (where we were headed), and the customs officers determined that the car was "unimportable". So we were given a letter explaining the situation, which also stated that neither my teenager nor I were charged with any criminal offences, and that we were admitted to the US as permanent residents, and we were turned around and told to take the car back to Canada.
This is where it gets interesting.
We drove back across the Ambassador Bridge to Canada Customs. The Customs officer took a look at the letter, looked at our passports and said, "Really? They wouldn't let your car in but you can go? That's crazy. So what are you going to do?"
I said I guess I have to figure out how to get rid of the car and try to go back.
Then he asked, "Are you both fully vaccinated?"
Thank goodness my teen had their second shot exactly two weeks to the day before we decided to cross. I showed the Canada Customs officer our slips evidencing full vaccination from the Ontario Ministry of Health, and he sat there, looking at our documents. Then he handed them all back, except the letter about the car, and said, "Good luck with your car. You can go back. You don't need to quarantine."
If it had been any other time, or even a day before, we would have had to have waited another two weeks before we could cross.
When we got back over to Windsor, in a matter of 3 hours, I sold my car for scrap and rented a U-Haul. I transferred all of our stuff into the U-Haul, and went back to the same crossing at Detroit. When we crossed, we were met by the border guard who had driven us to the turnaround point with our car.
"What did you do with the car?" he asked.
"Sold it for scrap."
He scanned our passports and asked, "Does the U Haul have any dirt in it?"
I told him that the woman at U-Haul had actually just mopped it out before she gave me the keys. He handed back our passports and said, "OK. Good luck today. Have a good drive."
And we were off on our two day drive to Houston, Texas.
TLDR: no problems with our documents when we crossed, scanned everything, took pics, all good, waiting for our SSNs to start our lives.
Thanks, everyone!
theshoei
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3:57 pm July 21, 2021
