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Visiting the US as a Canadian - Question by US border officer

akbardxb

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I've been to the US a number of time on my previous citizenship, but recently made our first trip to the US as Canadians. Not much rush at the border. We were asked a total of 5 questions.
1. Are you all from one family?
2. Where are you going?
3. Purpose of visit?
4. What do you do?
5. "Are all of you born Canadians?"

The first four questions were ordinary and routine. The last one seemed weird so I'm not sure what to make of this. On getting the answer in the negative, there was no further questioning and we were waved off.

My spouse and I debated this for a while as it did seem odd. Is there a difference in treatment if you are born Canadian or not? Anyone else with a similar experience? Am I overthinking this?
 

scylla

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I've been to the US a number of time on my previous citizenship, but recently made our first trip to the US as Canadians. Not much rush at the border. We were asked a total of 5 questions.
1. Are you all from one family?
2. Where are you going?
3. Purpose of visit?
4. What do you do?
5. "Are all of you born Canadians?"

The first four questions were ordinary and routine. The last one seemed weird so I'm not sure what to make of this. On getting the answer in the negative, there was no further questioning and we were waved off.

My spouse and I debated this for a while as it did seem odd. Is there a difference in treatment if you are born Canadian or not? Anyone else with a similar experience? Am I overthinking this?
You're overthinking this. They can ask whatever they want. Just answer the questions briefly and move on.

Yes, there could be different treatment if you weren't born in Canada and the US has concerns with your country of origin for some reason. There can be so many other reasons why border officials ask non-standard questions. There's certainly profiling at the border for various reasons. Sometimes they ask these questions just to make sure you answer truthfully or are looking at you behaviourally / how you react.

I often get additional questions because my husband is American. They will ask me if I have plans to live in the US or if we have any property there or how often I visit the US. Probably they are assessing whether I'm truly a visitor. Questions are sort of irritating but I just answer them and move on. On more than one occasion I've been asked why we don't live in the US and instead live in Canada.
 

scylla

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I read the articles cited by @shiremag. Interesting. I am not sure Canada has any place dictating to the U.S. that it should accept all Canadian passport holders as being the same and questions for all must be the same. The U.S. would ignore such an entreaty in any event.
You are right and they don't. No more than the US can tell Canada what to do. Each country has control over their own border and security and by asking to enter that country we agree to be subject to their rules and reviews.

Canada frankly doesn't treat all US passport holders the same. The "were you born in the US" question gets asked by CBSA too. I have a few friends who get that question pretty much every time they visit.
 
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akbardxb

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You're overthinking this. They can ask whatever they want. Just answer the questions briefly and move on.

Yes, there could be different treatment if you weren't born in Canada and the US has concerns with your country of origin for some reason. There can be so many other reasons why border officials ask non-standard questions. There's certainly profiling at the border for various reasons. Sometimes they ask these questions just to make sure you answer truthfully or are looking at you behaviourally / how you react.

I often get additional questions because my husband is American. They will ask me if I have plans to live in the US or if we have any property there or how often I visit the US. Probably they are assessing whether I'm truly a visitor. Questions are sort of irritating but I just answer them and move on. On more than one occasion I've been asked why we don't live in the US and instead live in Canada.
@scylla & @Kaibigan this isn't a complaint, rather a query if someone else has faced similar questions. Unfortunately, you can't claim the '5th' when being questioned by any immigration officer - there is no choice but to state the facts as they are! The country of my origin is actually quite buddy buddy with the US. LOL.

What surprised me was that it wasn't my first visit to the US and on my previous passport, the questions were restricted to place, reason & duration of visit and we were waved off with a 'welcome to the United States'. This time it was just a wave off and no 'welcome to the US' :)
 

YVR123

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@scylla & @Kaibigan this isn't a complaint, rather a query if someone else has faced similar questions. Unfortunately, you can't claim the '5th' when being questioned by any immigration officer - there is no choice but to state the facts as they are! The country of my origin is actually quite buddy buddy with the US. LOL.

What surprised me was that it wasn't my first visit to the US and on my previous passport, the questions were restricted to place, reason & duration of visit and we were waved off with a 'welcome to the United States'. This time it was just a wave off and no 'welcome to the US' :)
I never pay attention to their questions when I cross the US border. Just answer them with the facts. A NO isn't anything negative.

I wasn't born in Canada. But they've asked many different questions. Like did I own the car that I was driving, what kind of shopping do I planned to do, who do I planned to visit, were the other passangers in the car related to me (or the other way and sometimes they were just friends car pooling).

I think they are trained to ask whatever could give them more information to evaluate. Don't look too much into it. (I used to cross the border daily half the time I was still on my first coffee in the morning. LOL)
 

scylla

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@scylla & @Kaibigan this isn't a complaint, rather a query if someone else has faced similar questions. Unfortunately, you can't claim the '5th' when being questioned by any immigration officer - there is no choice but to state the facts as they are! The country of my origin is actually quite buddy buddy with the US. LOL.

What surprised me was that it wasn't my first visit to the US and on my previous passport, the questions were restricted to place, reason & duration of visit and we were waved off with a 'welcome to the United States'. This time it was just a wave off and no 'welcome to the US' :)
I find it's super random personally. Sometimes I get a ton of questions and sometimes they barely look at my passport.

It can depend on so many things... Who you get, what kind of mood they are in, how busy they are, etc. I stopped guessing a long time ago. Just be prepared for anything. My last pre-COVID business trip they got all weird on me because I was only going for one night and had packed super light. They kept asking me where my bags were. And I kept telling them everything was with me.

I have a friend who is a dual Aussie and Mauritian (by birth) citizen (now also a Canadian citizen). Before he became a Canadian citizen, he normally experienced two extremes at the US border. One was being waved through. The other was "let's spend 2 hours in secondary inspection". Sadly it was mostly the second. Once I was with him when that happened and it sucked (we were driving). Sadly I think it was because the officer didn't know what Mauritius was. He asked him three times where he was born, then said "where's that?" and then just sent us to secondary.
 

lingow

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Dec 30, 2020
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You just get the randomest questions at the US border; I think they're trying to keep the conversation going to see if anything about you seems suspicious or you're trying to lie or hide something. I'm a US citizen and I get asked all kinds of random stuff, like how I met the friend I just said I'm visiting, or "what's wrong with getting a job in the US", or what my mom does for a living. Just answer truthfully and briefly.
 

CoorsHeavy

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Jul 16, 2022
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That’s a stupid question anyways , they read the place of birth on the passport - so why ask ??? Some officers are funny, I will reply “ oh officer no I was not born in Canada - my place of birth is “__” - it should be on the passport “


No offence but Americans are bad with geography, so just answer- so far my experience at Buffalo land crossing has been good - officers are nice , and Kind - I never wear hat or glasses , they ask me 1 question everytime - where do I live and do I do for a living and what kind of company is it where I work. Everytime I get asked this - and nothing else .
 

scylla

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You just get the randomest questions at the US border; I think they're trying to keep the conversation going to see if anything about you seems suspicious or you're trying to lie or hide something. I'm a US citizen and I get asked all kinds of random stuff, like how I met the friend I just said I'm visiting, or "what's wrong with getting a job in the US", or what my mom does for a living. Just answer truthfully and briefly.
Some of those questions are almost hilarious.

I've gotten the "how did you meet your friends" question before too. Once I was crossing the border with two friends by car and we got this question. We were visiting our friends in the US who we met through a running club so we answered: "we run with them". The US border guy was like: "WHAT?!?" and us dumb Canadians just repeated the same thing. Then one of us clued into the fact that this made it sound like we were part of a gang. He looked very relieved when we explained we met them cross-country running and let us go.
 

armoured

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That’s a stupid question anyways , they read the place of birth on the passport - so why ask ??? Some officers are funny, I will reply “ oh officer no I was not born in Canada - my place of birth is “__” - it should be on the passport “
It's a basic fact of this type of fact-checking to ask questions to which they know the answer to - or really any damn question they feel like - even when the answer is irrelevant and the information useless.

They just watch to see if you try hard to remember or look like you're fabricating or hesitate unnaturally or think too hard about why the question matters (you could be trying to think if the answer to that question is related to any other lies yo might have told, i.e. your brain is struggling to maintain consistency).

Do they know how to use that information or 'read' your physical response? Well, many of them think they do, anyway.
 

evdm

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Jun 16, 2017
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I'll admit that it seems a bit odd to ask the question directly, but I did have a similar experience when I travelled to the US using my Canadian passport for the first time. In my case the border guard asked me what country I was born in. The officer was unsure of the country code that was printed in the passport. Similarly, I do not have a passport from the country I was born in, which I've also been questioned on when I used my original nationality's passport.

It's already been mentioned here before, but border guards can and do ask seemingly random (to us) questions that help them establish the bona-fides of a legitimate traveller. Don't forget border officers are looking out for false documents, human trafficking, and a wide range of other flags when you present yourself for inspection. Using a new passport, especially one of a new country can raise their suspicions. Remember when they scan the document it will pull up information such as previous travel, name/dob matches, etc.

In the country of birth case, because it's printed right there in the passport you presented it's a simple thing that seems innocuous to ask, but could potentially expose someone trying to use a false document when they hesitate or provide the wrong answer.

I've crossed the border a few times since that first time and when using my passport (as opposed to Nexus) have not been asked the country of birth question since.
 

bellaluna

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You just get the randomest questions at the US border; I think they're trying to keep the conversation going to see if anything about you seems suspicious or you're trying to lie or hide something. I'm a US citizen and I get asked all kinds of random stuff, like how I met the friend I just said I'm visiting, or "what's wrong with getting a job in the US", or what my mom does for a living. Just answer truthfully and briefly.
Most random question I got by a CBP officer was "So your zodiac sign is XXX (based on my birth date)?"

Every CBP interaction I've had has been jovial (but I am not as frequent a visitor as many of you); I've gotten far more attitude by CBSA officers as a PR.
 

dpenabill

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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.
 

scylla

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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.
While this is a tiny tiny representation of the total, I have two friends who I know original selected the option not to show their place of birth on their CAN passport. Both said this created so many issues at the border (entering the US, as well as other countries) that they modified their passports to add it back in.

I also have a friend (more of an acquantaince really) who pulled a "plead the 5th" at the US border. He said something like "I don't have to answer that question" to which they responded, "yes, and we don't have to let you into the US of A". So he was sent home. This was a decade ago (at least?) and he still has some sort of flag on his profile related to this that creates problems for him.