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by KineticLensman
1038 days ago
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Yes, I got caught out for misrepresenting my reason for visiting Canada once. My UK company provided tech support to UK government organisations and routinely sent people to Canada as part of this contract. All fine. They then sent me out to provide similar support to a Canadian govt org with the paperwork they provided to people attending conferences or sales meetings, etc. The immigration officers spotted the difference when they asked me a couple of simple questions that I answered naively. I was threatened with arrest and deportation unless I presented with the correct docs in 24 hours. It took me three days to get the right paperwork from the guys back home but because I was obviously a clueless techie being messed around by corporate the immigration people were okay with this. |
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I just wanted to add that the whole experience was massively stressful and gave me much greater awareness of the challenges faced by people who can’t cross borders easily. I was given the 24 ultimatum when I arrived in Canada which was late on Sunday afternoon UK time. Luckily I had the mobile number of a very dynamic departmental director who was staggered that corporate had totally misunderstood the circumstances of my trip. He kicked some ass to make things happen and I was home and dry, although I didn’t know it at the time. My customers (the Canadian Army, bless them) were also very understanding and put up with my slightly ragged sleep-deprived performance resulting from lengthy phone calls to corporate lawyers in the middle of the night, Canadian time. They introduced me to a senior military stakeholder I had to brief as the ‘criminal software architect’ which was actually a superb icebreaker.
But my heart goes out to people who don’t have this sort of support.