Border Hassles

I have complained before about the troubles we have getting back into our own country from Canada. New regulations such as the enhanced license, which can be gotten with your current driver's license and a birth certificate (the two items, by the way, with which you could get back home before the bureaucratic necessity of a $45 'enhanced' one) are little more than nuisances which line the coffers of the government. But sometimes, and increasingly so, border crossings are becoming nothing less than demeaning.

I have been asked what I do for a living, and how much money I have on me, both Canadian and US please. But the crowning moment came just last night as I returned from a meeting in Windsor. After the usual litany of questions which were none of the guard's business, and after the Canadian guard had allowed me into Canada with a simple swipe of my new license through some kind of machine, I was asked, "When was the last time you were arrested?"

"When did you quit beating your wife, sir?" would have been just as appropriate. And no less insulting. The last time I was arrested? Such a line of questioning is simply wrong. It is an affront to the dignity of any honest citizen merely out and about for his own legitimate entertainment. So what if that evening out happened primarily in a neighboring and friendly nation? No citizen of the United States ought to be subject to that sort of innuendo by an agent of his own government under any circumstances. It serves no purpose but to injure someone's character.

I had my proof, which the government of United States had approved, which supposedly told him all he needed to know about me. Proof which the border guard of another country accepted without malice or delay, it should be added. I went to extra expense and hassles simply to get it, trying to be a good citizen, simply to be able to do what I had freely done for years before with no such extra efforts. Yet I am still subjected to sophomoric insolence.

When we have to put up with insults like these from our own people, the terrorists have won. Treating law abiding citizens this way must stop.