Enlightenment Follows Confusion

It happens, as I hope to show you, but I was quite confused at first.

The Globe on Christmas Eve ran a story titled ‘Border measures announced as part of Canada’s response to Trump’s tariff threat begin to take effect’

One measure taking effect that the story focuses on is to eliminate ‘flagpoling’. What is that, you ask. The story says this –

“Immigration measures announced as part of Canada’s border response to president-elect Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariff threat are starting to be implemented, beginning with a ban on what’s known as “flagpoling.”

This is when someone who was in Canada on a temporary visa leaves for the U.S. then quickly re-enters Canada to access immigration services at a port of entry.

The restriction on providing work and study permits to flagpolers takes effect today.

Last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said that going forward temporary visa holders will have to apply online to extend their stay in Canada.”

This prompted a Question From Confused Al –

Ignoring the US President-Elect for the moment, why would Canada want to ban this? More basically, why did anyone holding a temporary visa do this in the first place? If you are holding a temporary visa to be in Canada, and you are in Canada, the obvious way to try to extend it would be to do that in Canada before your current visa expires. Why were people leaving Canada (to go to the US or anywhere else) and doing it from outside the country? Does this involve some kind of attempt to hoodwink Canadian immigration authorities? I can’t see how. If you hold a temporary visa and you try to extend it, from anywhere, the authorities are going to know all about you and proceed accordingly.

Well, then, it must be that the reason Canada is now banning flagpoling is precisely to mollify the President-Elect, right? (I am on record as saying that we should not do that, but….)

Except I can think of no reason for Donald Trump to give a fig about holders of temporary Canadian visas going to the US to renew them from there. The whole point is to get one’s visa to stay in Canada renewed, and hence to go back to Canada. Unless there is evidence that these flagpolers are engaging in drug-dealing or bank-robbing while in the US, what concern of this is anyone in the US, including Donald Trump? People enter the US for brief periods in the millions every year, these flagpolers must, like anyone else, have to talk to the nice US border people when they go into the US to flagpole in order to gain entry, so – what’s the big deal?

Trump is not a man for details, so I doubt he’s heard of flagpoling, but if someone he trusted explained it to him, I cannot see any reason for its banning to impress him regarding Canada’s efforts to keep bad people from crossing into the US from Canada. Flagpolers don’t sound to me like bad people, unless, as I say, they get up to no good during their time in the US. Were that frequently the case, I would have expected the G&M article to mention it.

So I was quite confused as to how banning flagpoling has anything to do with Trump’s tariff threat.

That is, until I went back and read an earlier G&M article from Dec 17, titled ‘Ottawa’s plan to secure border includes more dogs, drones and action to combat fentanyl trade’

Here this flagpoling is explained in more detail. The key sentences:

“He also said Canada intends to put an end to an irritant with the U.S. known as flagpoling.

The ruse, where foreign nationals already in Canada cross the border without going further into the United States, and then immediately return here, takes up lots of resources and distracts border officers from enforcement, he said.

Foreign nationals do this to speed up the renewal of study or work permits or to complete the process of obtaining permanent residence, applying at the border rather than applying online in Canada, which can take weeks or months.”

Now I get it. Flagpolers talk to the nice US border guards at, say, the Ambassador Bridge, but do not even go into Detroit, they immediately turn around, right on the bridge, and go see the nice Canadian border guards, and there they apply to have their Canadian visas renewed.

Why do they do this? Because the Canadian government has in place an immigration system in which applying for visa renewal from inside Canada takes weeks or months, but if you flagpole you get to apply immediately, in person, and you are done. It is not the US for which this practice is an ‘irritant’ it is an irritant for the Canadian border people. They don’t just do the usual border check with flagpolers, they have to help them fill out the visa renewal form. What Donald Trump thinks about banning flagpoling is irrelevant, banning it is better for Canada – or at least for it’s CBSA workers.

Having now read the entire earlier G&M article in detail, I think I see a trend, and I think I like it. I think all Canadians should.

The article also says Canada is stepping up border surveillance. So, to quote again:

“RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme, who was at the launch of the plan in Ottawa, said the Mounties are hoping to use more helicopters very swiftly and may rent them at first for a speedy deployment. He has also been speaking to government departments about their inventories to see whether there is equipment the RCMP could use to enhance the work of their border detachments, such as Valleyfield in Quebec.

The RCMP’s new Aerial Intelligence Task Force, which will include the use of mobile watchtowers, will provide round-the-clock surveillance of parts of the border between official ports of entry.”

So, leaving aside the sad fact that the RCMP is going to lower-level police forces to scrounge up more helicopters, and also setting aside the fact that I cannot even imagine what a ‘mobile watchtower’ is, what this says is that Canada’s police force(s) is going to be keeping a closer eye on the parts of Canada near the US border but between points of entry.

No doubt Team Canada will spin this to the President-Elect as an effort to keep bad things and people from going into the US from Canada, but any adult knows that those guys in the choppers will be investigating anyone suspicious they see in those areas, whether they are walking towards or away from the border.

Again, a good thing for Canadians, if indeed weapons and drugs are being smuggled into Canada from the US, as we so often are told.

There’s more good news for Canadians. Quoting again:

“Under the plan, the Canada Border Services Agency will also train and deploy more dog teams to sniff out illegal drugs. And CBSA officers will have access to new chemical detection tools capable of detecting the precursor chemicals used to make synthetic opioids such as fentanyl as they come into Canada.”

Again, this sniffing and detecting will all happen in Canada. I don’t know if Trump will be impressed, I don’t care, these are good things for those of us who live here if they are effective.

More:

“Changes designed to streamline the asylum system “to deal quickly with illegitimate claims” are also being prepared, Mr. Miller said.

The government said it would also impose restrictions on countries that do not facilitate the rapid return of citizens who are subject to a removal order in Canada, or who came here fraudulently.”

Again, getting fraudsters and other bad actors out of the country and back to from wherever they came – good things for Canadians.

Now, I have no idea if any of this will be effective, this is still the government that can’t shoot straight, but the idea behind all these measure is to make it harder for bad people and bad things to get into and stay in Canada. If that means they are less likely to go from Canada to the US and that impresses Mr. Trump, fine.

This is the pattern I see. A Canadian government that has generally not shown much interest or ability in carrying out the basics of government has apparently been induced to finally do so in at least one dimension by the blustering of an incoming US President. I don’t know if this is any part of what Trump cares about, and I don’t care. Maybe Canadians are going to have to learn to appreciate Mr Trump a bit more, even though he has no visible appreciation for us. Don’t look a gift Trump in the mouth, eh? He’s got our government doing its job – at least a little.

Epilogue: After writing a draft of this I came across a long article in the Free Press by Niall Ferguson, the eminent British historian. He does go on, but that being said, he’s a smart guy and a good writer, and he makes a much broader version of my points above about Trump’s impact across the globe. It’s an interesting read.