[bluepeter]

I'm in my 50s and when I was early 20s I crossed from US to Canada for a business meeting. "Why are you coming to Canada?" "To work." "Where's your work permit?" "Huh, I don't have one." That simple "wrong word" slip STILL gets me flagged and cordoned off into hours-long border diversions whenever I go to Canada.

Just imagine how it'll be now... for decades you'll be fending off some hidden receipts from an IG comment you made.

[phil21]

Back in around 2012 or so, some friends and I decided to book a canal house in Amsterdam to all pitch in together and live there for about 2 months. Celebrating a few coinciding life achievements before moving onto the next phase of adult life sort of thing.

I worked remotely, so planned to simply do work for half the time I was there. As such, I brought a proper monitor, keyboard, etc. with me.

As I have my 20" boxed up LCD panel in my arms in the immigration/customs line at Schipol, a Dutch immigration officer comes up and asks me what the monitor is for. I of course like an idiot said "staying here for a couple months for a vacation, but I plan to work some while I'm here!". I got infinitely lucky with the officer in question - she very quickly told me I was incorrect and that the monitor was to play video games and that's what I was going to tell the immigration officer at the passport desk.

One of those early lessons learned that I'm sure looking young, naive, and stupid helped me in a way that I could not get away with in my mid-40's these days.

[tlavoie]

I worked for a small company that did work for a cross-border manufacturer. Coming from Canada, we were told explicitly that "meetings" was a perfectly good reason for a day trip, and we were never there "to work". US customs has been historically as humourless a bunch as ever existed, and the factory on the other side was unionised, so meetings it is.

What cracked me up was driving back late one evening, arriving back at the Canadian side. The agent asked where I'd been, and I mentioned the town just behind me.

"Oh, _meetings_, eh?" wink

[foogazi]

Not your fault but another lesson here is lying to border guards is ok if they say it is.

Which proves how much theater there is in security and that laws are not there to be blindly followed, but to enable the state to pursue its perceived enemies

[ducktastic]

Had a similar experience: over a decade ago our firm opened an office in Canada and being scrappy and startup-like I had to cross into Canada with some networking equipment to help set up the new office. The amount of scrutiny was insane: thankfully it never stuck and I was eventually let on to do the work and return

[ninalanyon]

Of the seventeen countries (including China, Saudi, Thailand, USA, etc.) I have visited over the last four decades the only time I have been taken out of the queue at passport control to be interviewed was at Toronto flying in from Europe. Actually the tone of voice was more suited to interrogation than polite inquiry. It was very odd, and quite at odds with both my impression of and experience of Canadians themselves.