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Starting today, crossing back and forth between the US and Canada will be much more difficult. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative went into effect today and from now on, anyone crossing between the two countries must present a passport.
The Canadian Press: Passports please: Requirement at Canada-U.S. border takes effect today.
This might end up being a problem for the 70% of Americans who do not have a passport. It is already a problem for those of us who live on the border and often drive up for dim sum in Motnreal's Chinatown or engage in some serious fashion and design consumption in Toronto.
Needless to say, crossing the Canadian border has always been much easier than crossing into Mexico. There is far less security, far fewer armed border guards. The reasons, no doubt, are complicated, but surely the fact that the Canadian border is about three times longer than the Mexican one, as well as the economic stability of Canada, and the whiteness of its population have all played some role in creating a relatively porous border. Today, all that ends.
Not only does the passport requirement make movement back and forth across the border more difficult, but it changes the symbolic weight of the border itself. As geographer Glen Elder explained it, borders must be performed. They aren't really "there" in any real way except to the extent human activities make them exist. The Canadian-US border is a case in point.
First, a certain architecture of borders must be build. Buildings, flag poles with the American and Canadian flags, security cameras, and road blocks must all be put into place. Then, of course, humans must populate this architecture of boundaries. You need guards in uniforms to engage in a ritual sort of exchange:
"Passports please. Where are you going? What is the purpose of your visit? Do you have any fruits and vegetables with you? Alcohol or tobacco?"
Now it is our turn, the border crossers, to engage in the ritualized behavior of nation state boundary maintainence. We act docile, hand over documents, lie about the sesame balls we have in the backseat because they are both contraband and because we cannot imagine that such delicious treats can present a threat to the security of the country (although perhaps this is a failure of imagination on our part since clearly sesame balls must be dangerous to the territorial integrity of the United States or why else would we all be engaging in this ritual of border creation in the first place?).
It is difficult not to mourn the end of a relatively open border. Yesterday, as my daughters and I drove up to Montreal for our usual dim sum, I could not find their passports. No problem, of course, since I had birth certificates. As we drove back last night, the border guard waived us through without even glancing at their documents. He seemed friendly and unconcerned about the sesame balls in the back seat. As of today, that friendliness will be more difficult to enact. We can no longer pretend that Vermont is a part of Quebec or that Canada is the 51st state of the United States.
We are officially two separate countries and the border will enact that separation ritualistically over and over again each time we pass over it. And many Americans will stop crossing over it. American tourism is already down in Canada and school trips to Canada are increasingly canceled, since not every child has a passport. Over time, the border will become more real and less porous. Its psychological weight will become heavier. And Canadians and Americans will not know one another as well. This is, we are told, security. But I doubt it will make any of us safer.
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