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The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

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Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#51

Post by cmrdporcupine »

jupp0r wrote: post #28
no_wizard wrote: post #12

one piece that is omitted from this is how the border is enforced. From the looks of it, unless you’re looking at becoming employed here they don’t really check your citizenship. That’s a win in my book. Reminds me that when I was a kid you could travel to / from Canada without a passport (only nation with that privilege if I recall correctly) and now you can’t. I recall no real good reasoning for it other than the D…

This is completely normal inside the EU. You barely notice you're in another country sometimes.

It's gone the opposite way between US and Canada since 9/11. Used to be able to cross the border with just a driver's license. Now you need a passport and the border agents are often incredibly hostile.

As a result I make a habit of not going to the Hostile States of Overarmed Americans despite it being only an hour away. The people are super nice, the government... not so much.

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#52

Post by 015UUZn8aEvW »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #2

It's interesting to see the efforts to lock down our once permeable borders succeeding in recent decades. It seems that for much of our history we had no issue with free passage across, but we have in my lifetime used the politics of fear to militarize our borders. Obviously some will disagree but this seems to me a regressive change.

The increasing legal constraints offset the declining technological constraints. Given modern communications and transportation technology, open borders would have very different practical effects today than a century or two ago. The number of people who would come in would be hugely greater than in the past.

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#53

Post by [deleted] »

chihuahua wrote: post #41
jupp0r wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been born in East Germany I can assure you that the "Left" is not a proponent of free movement and that they will gladly attempt to shoot you for trying to escape from socialist paradise. Calling US Democrats "socialist" for wanting things like universal free health care makes me cringe in light of that.

You are 100% correct of course. Political discussions in the U.S. using the word "socialism" are basically meaningless, because people use that word to mean several completely different things: 1. Socialism as practiced in eastern Europe during the Cold War - basically the state is a prison, no one is allowed to leave, people who attempt to leave are shot and left to die, everyone is under surveillance, and dissent i…

[deleted]

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#54

Post by schoen »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #45
morelisp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean all the things just as hard to get as a passport, some invented specifically to be used for this new program? Sure, I guess you could get one of those instead. But there's no reason to get one of them rather than a passport except as a fig leaf for people to say a passport "isn't mandatory". Or, and bear with me for a second, we could have kept freedoms we had on September 10th, 2001.

It’s far easier to get an EDL than to get a passport, what are you talking about? We never had Schengen. Almost every other country has similar entry requirements, why should the US and Canada be any different? They’re not in a far-reaching political alliance, there’s no incentive to have open borders or provide exceptions to rules. 9/11 changed things. It’s absurd to expect things to always be the same and just beca…

> It’s absurd to expect things to always be the same and just because it was open before doesn’t mean that was ever intended or expected to be permanent.

On the flip side, there's also an interpretation under which passports (and possibly visas) were not intended or expected to be permanent:

https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas...

This article quotes various delegates to international conventions apparently taking for granted that it would be desirable to return to a pre-WWI default of people not usually needing travel documents or being subject to border formalities¹.

(I've seen this article several times, but haven't seen if there's a contrary interpretation under which the diplomats or politicians did not, in fact, have the intuition or consensus that it describes. Obviously improvements in transportation technology mean that there are orders of magnitude more international trips than there were in the pre-WWI era, so one could imagine that most migration -- and tourism -- was seen as a relatively marginal activity in the past and that it no longer looks that way when so many more people can afford to do it.)

¹ not quite sure how to reconcile this with inspections of migrants around the turn of the 20th century, even if those were more focused on public health and stuff

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#55

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

goodcanadian wrote: post #22
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #9

I like this log used to protect the border: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0108844,-73.3349375,3a,75y,1...

While the border looks extremely porous, the reality is that it is heavily monitored. You will be met by the police or border patrol if you cross in the wrong place or even if you simply loiter near the border. EDIT: In response to the skepticism, here is a source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ishmaeldaro/us-canada-border-photos This Photographer Spent Three Years Documenting The Canada-U.S. Border Along the way, Rutkaus…

Porous and unmonitored enough that a family can walk across and die of exposure: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60290955

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#56

Post by TaylorAlexander »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #52
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #2

It's interesting to see the efforts to lock down our once permeable borders succeeding in recent decades. It seems that for much of our history we had no issue with free passage across, but we have in my lifetime used the politics of fear to militarize our borders. Obviously some will disagree but this seems to me a regressive change.

The increasing legal constraints offset the declining technological constraints. Given modern communications and transportation technology, open borders would have very different practical effects today than a century or two ago. The number of people who would come in would be hugely greater than in the past.

Cool. Let’s welcome them and also stop bombing their countries with our militaries and restricting their ability to clone our working technology and maybe they’ll stop trying to leave their homes.

EDIT: Point being that open borders has the benefit of forcing us to face the ways in which we are harming other places. The fact that currently many people would leave their homes to come here is a feature not a bug. We’re trying to abuse the rest of the world for our benefit and that makes other people unhappy. We should stop.

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#57

Post by alisonatwork »

serial_dev wrote: post #38
rascul wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could be argued from a "leftist" position (whatever that means nowadays) that: it's mostly working class people that need to compete with immigrants. If the immigrants are undocumented or very poor, they are more likely to tolerate lower wages and unsafe working conditions, meaning that I (if I was a working class American) would have less negotiating power when it comes to my wages and work conditions, as there…

It might feel like a cosmetic nitpicking, but if I say they are "stealing our jobs", I'm blaming and vilifying the immigrants without wanting to understand their reasons for coming here and the unfortunate situation they are in. On the other hand, my ability to negotiate with the powerful owner class is strongly reduced if there are people that are willing to be exploited or simply don't have another choice due to th…

From my perspective any self-proclaimed leftist who is against freedom of movement is essentially a crypto-fascist. The working class aren't really taking back the means of the production if that so-called working class is a privileged group drawn along nationalist or racist lines that explicitly exclude the workers of the world.

The way I see it, freedom of movement is pretty much the most fundamental freedom that exists in organic beings. We eat, we grow, we migrate. All the other freedoms are built on that one. If people aren't free to change their living conditions by moving somewhere that provides better opportunities, then they're not really free at all.

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#58

Post by lmm »

chihuahua wrote: post #41
jupp0r wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been born in East Germany I can assure you that the "Left" is not a proponent of free movement and that they will gladly attempt to shoot you for trying to escape from socialist paradise. Calling US Democrats "socialist" for wanting things like universal free health care makes me cringe in light of that.

You are 100% correct of course. Political discussions in the U.S. using the word "socialism" are basically meaningless, because people use that word to mean several completely different things: 1. Socialism as practiced in eastern Europe during the Cold War - basically the state is a prison, no one is allowed to leave, people who attempt to leave are shot and left to die, everyone is under surveillance, and dissent i…

> 2. Socialism as practiced in Europe these days, with a focus on Scandinavia. Somewhat higher taxes, reasonable universal health care, generally people are not left to starve in the street. I'm not sure if it makes sense to call this "socialism." I guess it's social-something.

I mean in France it's literally the Socialist Party. Isn't it more useful to use the word to refer to a political movement that's real and relevant today rather than one that vanished for most practical purposes over 30 years ago?

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#59

Post by fwilliams »

It’s crazy seeing this on the front page of HN!

I grew up in Stanstead. I have fond memories of story time as a child in the library, borrowing movies and comic books, and playing age of empires 2 with my best friend on the two shared computers in the front room.

There’s also a street in the town (aptly named Canusa st.) which is half in the US and half in Canada. Interestingly, the houses on one side have flags reminding you where you are, while there are no flags on the other. Figuring out which side is left as an exersize to the reader ;)

Re: The US-Canada border cuts through the Haskell Free Library and Opera House

#60

Post by dtgriscom »

fwilliams wrote: post #59

It’s crazy seeing this on the front page of HN! I grew up in Stanstead. I have fond memories of story time as a child in the library, borrowing movies and comic books, and playing age of empires 2 with my best friend on the two shared computers in the front room. There’s also a street in the town (aptly named Canusa st.) which is half in the US and half in Canada. Interestingly, the houses on one side have flags remi…

Is it that the US residents are chauvinistic, or that the Canadians are embarrassed?
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