In Soviet America, Border Crosses You

During our third and last night at the Bayshore Westin, a terrific wind howled against the outside of our glass-box room. In the morning when we pulled back the curtains, the windows were covered in an opaque sweat of condensation. Wiping it away, I saw outside the sky was brilliant and clear, but it was going to be a very cold day. In three days there, we'd managed to see three different sides of Vancouver, weatherwise.

After indulging in the delicious and ample breakfast buffet, we checked out and retrieved our car from the garage for the first time since checking in. Then we navigated back through the city streets and onto the highway towards the border. Red had a class scheduled that evening in Portland, and our intended itinerary would give us plenty of time to get back.

Intended---that's the key word here. As it happens, it didn't work out that way at all.

All was fine until we got close to the border crossing north of Blaine. The live-update sign along the road informed us that it would be about forty-five minutes of wait to reach the border itself. Not so bad. It could be worse. We lurched forward with the traffic for nearly an hour, past the Peace Arch. The "British Columbia is idle-free" signs along the road urged us to turn off the engine while waiting for the process to play out. Finally we rolled up to the toll-booth-like gate of the border crossing, right about the time when the sign predicted that we would.

We handed the woman our passports, answered the brief questions, and just when we were thinking all was clear, the woman handed up a yellow slip of paper and informed us that we would need to pull off to the parking area, as we had been selected for a "random" secondary inspection.

"Random, my ass," I muttered, as Red, somewhat irked by the delay, navigated her Ford into the covered area. We were supposed to park and then go inside the "detention area" as they called. Nice terminology.

Inside was a lovely new facility with a high ceiling. There were three queues between ropes leading up to a long row of Dell computer screens along a counter. There were at least twenty such terminals. All but one of them were idle and unused .

As U.S. citizens, we discovered we were supposed to be in "Line A." We found ourselves second in line behind another couple. Line B was evidently for foreigners and was much, much longer. There were about fifty or sixty people in that line. Line C was for agricultural inspections.

It became clear over the next few minutes just long this would take. The single border agent was processing everyone in all the lines, taking one from each line at his choice. And he was taking his sweet time doing it.

The empty-but-for-one terminals, as well as the glacial slowness of the agent reminded very strongly of my experiences in Eastern Bloc back in the 1980s. This is the way Russians had to buy train tickets back in the old days. You stood in a barely moving line for a hours only to have the grumpy woman disappear right when you got to the front, with no explanation.

And true to good old socialist form, at one point, the sole CPB agent on duty got up and left the terminal, his shift evidently over. There was about a five minute gap while the next one took his time, shuffling around behind the counter at snail speed, until finally sitting down. All the while about a half dozen other CPB agents, men and women, stood idly in the background in the office area chatting.

Down at the end of the counter, two other CPB agents were manning the cashier desk, even though the cashier was used for only about ten seconds of activity every ten minutes, whenever one of the foreigners had to pay for a visa or something like that. Most of the time, the two cashier agents just chatted loudly.

But like I said, the brand new building was quite nice, no doubt a product of the flush of Homeland Security cash in the wake of the Defining Moment of Our Nation That Changed Everything.

I began quietly mocking the whole thing, in earshot to the foreigners nearby. "Yeah," I said, in a nasal drawl, "I'm gonna just walk back behind the counter for a few minutes and make 'em think I'm going to sit down. Watch this..."

Then it was a couple more minutes until he called the next group up from Line B, and Australian family who had rented a car in Canada and wanted to tour the west coast (very suspicious, evidently, from the way the agent handled them). It's as if he had never heard of such a thing.

Even though we were second in Line A, it was still at least an hour before we got our turn to go up and give our yellow slip to the young dude in the black coat toting a side arm sitting behind the terminal. By that time more Americans and foreigners had joined the line. It was clear that all the other American couples had at least one member who was foreign born. We were the white American couple in the entire place.

The border agent asked for our passports and we handed them over.  He then proceeded to interrogate Red about where she lived and where she was going. Then he asked me the same questions. I was a bit touchy at this point, so I answered his questions as curtly and matter-of-factly as possible, Joe Friday style, looking right back into his eyes.

He didn't like this at all. I suppose most people he meets are sheepish and meek in the face of the mighty power of the Federal Government.

"Are you OK?" he asked me in a serious tone.

 I gritted my teeth.

"Yes," I replied keeping eye contact, "are you?"

I could see in his eyes at that moment a look of contempt for me, as if he wished he could belt me, but knew he couldn't (at least not right then).

Red took the opportunity to shift the tone with a well-timed "aw, shucks, honey---he's always like that, ha, ha" kind of interruption that eased the tension slightly.  

After this brief initial interrogation, he told us to sit down. Then after ten minutes he called Red back up and interrogated her separately outside of my hearing.

As she told me later, and as I discerned from my own subsequent private interrogation, it was clear that our selection was not at all random, and was all about yours truly.

"How well do you know this guy?" he kept asking her. "Pretty well," she said, keeping her cool. He informed her that he was going to search her car. "Am I going to find a bunch of cash out there when I search?" he asked her. "Are you sure?"

Then it was my turn to be grilled. From the questions, it was clear that my activity last winter in southern California, where I had skirted the border area without leaving the country, and had passed through several internal border controls, was somehow suspicious to them. 

"So you live in Oregon?" I said. "But...you used to live somewhere else?" He said as if trying to catch me in a lie. I would have none of the bullshit-by-implication.  "Yes, I...moved," I said, in my matter-of-fact tone.

His questions actually came rather slowly. In between each one, he kept looking over the computer screen, scrutinizing information for a long time, his faced with a puzzled and concerned look. It was as if he had encountered pure chaos in my personal being. I even wondered if he might be reading my blog or my Facebook profile.

"So you travel a lot?" he said, again with his suspicious tone, his eyes darting over the computer screen. "Yes, I travel" I said, providing no elaboration.

He kept asking about my job over and over---who I worked for, what I did for a living.

"I work remotely," I said, using the words that Elaine M. had suggested I use at my high school reunion, to clarify my life in the most directly comprehensible way.

"So you work from home?" he asked, confused.

"No, I work from wherever I please," I replied, using the same tone of voice that had befuddled the passport agency woman in San Diego last January.

He seemed to be unable to process the idea. It was clear that he was sure I was a drug runner, or something along those lines, although he never came out and accused me.

I refused to be cowed or ashamed of anything, even as I realized that the Federal Government can crush any of us like a bug, at any time, if they choose. 

He wanted reasons for decisions. But I refused to give any other reason for my behavior than the equivalent of "oh, just a whim." Anything beyond that falls into the realm of none-of-your-fucking-business, thank-you-very-much. I wanted to show him what freedom looks like, right in front of his face. 

Finally he got around to searching the car. Red of course had to give him her car key. "You only have two keys?" he asked her upon seeing her key ring, as if surprised. It's funny how they try to make anything you do, no matter how normal, seem suspicious. I'm sure it's part of their training. After he went outside, a group of three other border agents followed him.

"Ah, the evidence creation team," I mumbled to Red.

While we sat on a window ledge next to the line of foreigners attempting to enter the country, I began loudly mocking it all again, this time with greater anger.  If nothing else, I wanted those waiting in line to witness at least one free person while they were in America. Also, it was clear they were going to be standing there for a looooong time and maybe they needed some entertainment, something to talk about.

"Yes, massa, we be good Amur'can slaves," I said, toward the counter, sneering in my best sarcastic Uncle Tom voice. "Massa want his slave to lick massa's boots good 'n clean?"

The search of course took quite a while. As I told Red, I'd been all over the world and had never been treated like this at any border until now. I knew it would probably be like this any time I came back to the U.S. from now on.

When it was finally over, he called us up and handed us our passports back without any further questions.

"Have a great day," he said, as we left.

Great, indeed. Certainly it's one I'll remember for quite some time.

After all, it's not every day that you find out that the Federal Government thinks you are a dire criminal.

But then again, as I would say back to them, the feeling's quite mutual.