Atlantica - 01.09.2007, Side 22

20 a t l a n t i c a
on the fly
Border Control
No boundaries can hold Atlantica staff writers Sara Blask and
Jonas Moody from their homeland. Armed with little more
than their American passports and rolling suitcases, these
frontiersmen brave the borders of the United States.
“Welcome to the United States. Everything
needs to come off the bus. Grab all your
bags and come inside.”
And so began the welcome from the Department
of Homeland Security officer who was assigned to
check our bus at the Canadian-American border
crossing in Highgate Springs, Vermont.
I was one of 18 passengers aboard a thrice-daily
Greyhound traveling from Montreal to Boston via
Burlington, Vermont, on a recent trip to the States.
While none of us looked too suspicious, we got the
full treatment. The drug dog. The baggage check.
The quiz. Actually, interrogation would be a more
appropriate word for some of the people waiting in
line. And that’s not even including all the other stuff
like surveillance cameras and radiation detectors
that I didn’t even bother to locate.
Like borders everywhere in the world, the rules
and regulations of traffic between Canada and the
United States continue to tighten. The number
of officers staffed at the crossings have been on
the rise since the September 11 attacks and last
year there was even a debate in Washington on
whether to erect a 3,145-mile-long wall between
the US and Canada, the world’s longest and safest
international boundary. Vermont Senator Patrick
Leahy dismissed the thought as a “cockamamie idea”
and the provision was eventually removed from the
Senate Immigration Bill.
At least for now.
Per instructions, we lined up single-file inside the
room. I was fourth from the end, which I figured was
plenty of buffer between me and the poor suckers in
the front like the girl who was asked twice why she
carried four mini-purses inside one larger bag. Or
the rotund Romanian grandmother of four who was
asked three times (as if she didn’t understand the first
time) if there were any meat products contained in
any of the three cakes she was carrying to her family
on Boston’s South Shore.
By the time my turn rolled around, Officer Welch,
the one who ordered us off the bus and one of two
officers assigned to question us passengers, looked
bored. Our bus had been cleared by the drug dog. No
Miami-style cocaine seizures or Santa Cruz, California-
style pot busts. Aside from our collective heritage—
Korean, Ethiopian, Japanese, Irish, Quebequois, and
Romanian, at least among those I met—we were a
pretty ordinary crew.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
Iceland.
“Huh?” He looks stumped.
“Iceland,” I repeat.
With the predictability of a robot he then asks
the question everyone asks when they hear I live
on this rock dubbed Iceland. “Iceland… must be
cold there?”
With the same predictability I explain that Iceland
is actually misnamed—that Iceland, you know, is
actually quite green.
He doesn’t care. “So how long have you been in
Canada?”
I tell him I’d been in Canada since Thursday,
at which point he proceeds to mindlessly thumb
through my American passport. “Bringing anything
into America that doesn’t belong here?”
“No,” I tell him politely.
“Welcome to the United States.” He dismisses me
with a nod.
Coming to AmeriCA
By Sara Blask
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