Ditto and ditto and ditto.
Exceptions:
-- Not all Canadian passports show place of birth; in particular, Canadian citizens can request a passport that does not show the place of birth:
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-passports/omit-place-birth.html
Doing so can have consequences for travel to other countries. Not sure how the U.S. authorities respond.
-- Questions are rarely "
random," at least not in terms of what is being asked or why. As
@evdm notes, the questions may
seem random to the traveler. But border control officials have their reasons. No need to wrestle with deciphering what those are, given the vast range of potential reasons and the fact that the traveler must answer truthfully regardless (with some exceptions to "
must" answer) -- as some of the comments have noted, many times questions are deliberately provocative, asked largely to gauge how the traveler responds.
-- Yes, a traveler can "
claim the fifth" (referring to the U.S. Constitution and its fifth amendment, part of the so-called Bill of Rights and the right to not incriminate oneself), and refuse to answer certain questions. While there is no penalty, as such, there are of course consequences, which can include being denied entry into the U.S. except for those persons otherwise entitled to entry, and even for those entitled to entry, declining to answer is likely to trigger an avalanche of unpleasantries, including a lengthy sojourn in Secondary.
Repetition For Emphasis:
-- Questions can be and often are irritating. My sense is that the American border officials often intend their questions to be irritating. To provoke. Apart from many questions asking what the border official already knows (and yeah, Canadian officers do this as well, but I see no reason to think it is intended to be irritating), it is common to be asked the same question more than once. Sometimes in slightly different ways. Sometimes the exact same question. Very recent example:
are these Ontario plates on this vehicle? A vehicle which I have driven across that same border location many dozens of times, which the officer had already commented about how long it had been since I previously drove that vehicle across the border, and driving that same vehicle across that same location going back more than a decade (yeah, I drive an old car, same old car I have had for a decade and a half, with same Ontario plates since 2009, going back to when I first became a Canadian PR). Followed by other questions about my car, asked in different ways.
-- Questions about property ownership in the states: While I do not recall the wide, wide range of questions I have been asked over the years, this is one I recall only recently being asked. And during my last, very recent trip, this was another question asked repeatedly, and I was also asked about family members (not traveling with me) owning property in the states. This has the imprint of some kind of targeting. Still not worth the effort to decipher. In response, I bite my lip, say no, hold back on editorializing, not quite smiling but nodding.
General Observations:
American officials are far from being the worst. Anyone who has traveled internationally much has quite likely encountered all sorts of challenging border control scenarios in other parts of the world. I have had to pay bribes (modest but, as the saying goes, a "
bite"). I have had guns brandished in my face, an officer cocking and uncocking a handgun while staring at me. And otherwise been in situations where you are not all that sure how things are going to go, wondering if it was a mistake to try entering that country there, then.
That said, my most confrontational, hostile border experience was indeed with U.S. border officials. Been a couple decades since then now. Once in a couple hundred times sort of thing (indeed, prior to 9/11/2001 I had crossed the U.S. border at least a hundred times with minimal questioning, nothing the least confrontational at all . . . then for a few years after 9/11 approaching the U.S. border was more than occasionally a grit-your-teeth and be prepared to deal with whatever they throw at you affair). If and when an officer gets a bug in the butt, all the traveler can do is remain calm, patient, polite, cooperative, answer questions matter-of-factly, and let the process sort itself out.
