Wel­come To the U.S.A!

— Pass­ports. Why are you com­ing to the USA today, mam’ ?

The heavy­weight offi­cer looks up to me sus­pi­ciously. Can’t blame him. It’s 7 am on a cold Novem­ber morn­ing and we look like a mis­matched pair of sleepy run­away

— Please step out of the vehi­cle and fol­low me.

He leaves inside the bor­der sta­tion with our pass­ports in hand while we’re park­ing the car on the small park­ing lot.

What am I sup­posed to say ? Today, I’m doing the “Buf­falo shuf­fle”. In Prescott.

Never heard of the “Buf­falo shut­tle” ? The Buf­falo Shuf­fle is to immi­grants in Canada what the Mid­night Express is to impris­oned for­eign­ers in Turkey. It’s the end of the wor­ries, the ulti­mate free­dom, the bye bye immi­gra­tion solution.

A lot of immi­grants apply for Per­ma­nent Res­i­dence within Canada while being on a work visa. How­ever, the process can be extremely long, up to 3 years. Some have found a way to bypass the prob­lem, they stay in Canada while the visa appli­ca­tion is processed out­side Canada, usu­ally in their home coun­try. This is usu­ally much faster. That’s what I had cho­sen : I sent my appli­ca­tion to the Cana­dian embassy in Paris while I was on a work visa in Canada.

How­ever this sys­tem has two mains downsides :

• If an inter­view is needed, it has to take place in the embassy that processes the appli­ca­tion.
• If the appli­ca­tion is suc­cess­ful, the visa is deliv­ered at the embassy where it was processed and must be val­i­dated upon arrival in Canada. The clos­est bor­ders and visa office in Ontario are Buf­falo and Prescott… hence the name.

I was lucky enough not to be inter­viewed. How­ever, when I got the news my visa was ready to be picked-up in Paris, I had to sent my pass­port to my mum since I was in Ottawa. She picked up the visa for me and sent my pass­port back. I then had to exit Canada and re-enter in order to offi­cially become a “landed immigrant”.

We sit on the wooden bench inside the bor­der sta­tion and I wait to be called. A huge por­trait of G.W Bush in front of me like an omni­scient Big Bother forced me to look some­where else. An “America’s Most Wanted” poster was pinned on my left, a pic­ture of Bin Laden promi­nently dis­played reminded me that “the world was at war”. Then on sec­ond though, it reminded me of the stu­pid­ity of the whole thing. Was Bin Laden going to cross in Prescott today ? Hum… Oh well, at least we would be able to spot it, thanks to this won­der­ful poster pro­mot­ing the man hunt.

By the time I’m finally called by the offi­cer, I know all the bad guys in the USA.

– What is the pur­pose of your visit in the US today ?

I explain that I just need to exit Canada and re-enter to get my landed immi­grant sta­tus and the offi­cer nods in appre­ci­a­tion. I’m not sure whether it’s because he’s famil­iar with the process or because he’s relieved not to have to sub­mit me to all the fin­ger­print­ing pic­ture tak­ing so early in the morn­ing. I spell my name a cou­ple of thou­sands of time and he enters all my infor­ma­tion in his computer.

– This is the doc­u­men­ta­tion you need, he says hand­ing me a piece of paper, you can now head back to Canada.

I look at the paper in my hand. “Zhu, refused alien”. I’m a fuck­ing refused alien. Could that be any weirder ? “Only in the US”, I guess.

We cross the iron bridge back to Prescott where I finally become a Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent. The whole process took less than an hour and I was able to go back to Ottawa as a semi-Canadian. Priceless.

A cou­ple weeks ago, two close friends of mine went through the same process. I tagged along and we even drove to the Thou­sand Island, in the small town of Alexan­dria Bay in the state of New York.

Wel­come To Ontario

Dri­ving To The USA

Alexan­dria Bay Harbor

US Immi­gra­tion Station

Related arti­cles:

1. Canada’s Visa War
2. 5 Rea­sons Your Visa Offi­cer Hates You
3. Syd­ney, Australia
4. How Long Does The Immi­gra­tion Process Take? (6÷10)
5. Arriv­ing In Canada With The Per­ma­nent Res­i­dence (7÷10)