Cross-border families, businesses cheer as gates raised for Canadians
North Country stores again missed out on Thanksgiving shoppers
Prior to the pandemic, Plattsburgh-area grocery stores boasted displays piled with Thanksgiving turkeys twice every fall: once in November and once on the second weekend in October, in time for the Canadian version of the harvest celebration. But both this October and last, the first turkey rush never happened, and even November’s shopping numbers shrank.
“The border being closed has changed it a lot,” said Tim Bedore, who has worked at the local Hannaford grocery store for decades. “But they’re going to be opening up the border next month, probably in time for Canadians to come down here for our Thanksgiving, and I expect them to flock down here in heavy, heavy numbers.”
Even without store-specific discounts, U.S. birds are far less expensive than those sold in the northern country. Thanksgiving shopping trips were so common before the pandemic that the Canadian government’s website specifies a one turkey per person limit for travelers.
For Garry Douglas, president and CEO of the North Country Chamber of Commerce, New York’s cross-border turkey trade is just one example of how deeply intertwined the state’s economies and communities are with Canada’s.
He is one of many advocates in the state celebrating the news this week that federal officials intend to open the country’s land borders with Canada and Mexico to vaccinated travelers in early November.
“We cannot replace two lost summers or the long impact on families and business,” Douglas said. “We may finally be seeing light at the end of a long tunnel.”
Senior officials in the administration of President Joe Biden previewed the new policy late Tuesday, saying the updated rules will come into effect next month and allow fully vaccinated foreign nationals to enter the U.S. by land, regardless of their reason for travel. They will coincide with an update to air-travel rules that will similarly bar U.s.bound travel by unvaccinated foreign nationals but permit leisure trips from any country.
The latest change was announced more than two months after Canada began allowing vaccinated U.S. visitors to enter the country by land or air Aug. 9. Both countries had placed strict restrictions on land-border transit for public health reasons in March 2020, as the pandemic began.
Lawmakers from New York on both sides of the aisle have come out in support of the most recent announcement, with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, sending “kudos to President Biden for doing the right thing,” and state Sen. Dan Stec, a Republican, pointing to bipartisan efforts and saying the reopening “can’t come soon enough.”
U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, whose constituents have lauded him for his consistent pressure on the issue, said that “for months now we’ve heard from businesses that are suffering and families distraught over the separation imposed by the continued border shutdown.” He said this update has been met with a sigh of relief from the state’s northern border communities.
The change will also mark the end to a two-tiered policy that has allowed Canadian and Mexican nationals to fly into the U.S. as tourists, while barring them from driving across the border, even to visit family members.
The months of restrictions have generated a strong backlash from New York families whose cross-border lives have been disrupted for over a year and a half. Devon Weber, a New York native living across the northern border with her Canadian husband, founded the Let Us Reunite campaign last October and has spent the past year raising awareness of how the closed border has affected families like hers.
“This means that families are going to be able to afford to spend more time together, without having to buy plane tickets,” Weber said. “It was just such an unrealistic and unaffordable method of travel for so many binational families.”
Weber added that for many in border communities, the change could mean a 20-minute cross-border drive in a private car, as opposed to a day of expensive flights. And while her own family doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday, the November break will mark the first moment since the beginning of the pandemic when they will have time off and the ability to meet.
“The first thing I did last night was I booked a rental car so my family can drive to New York for American Thanksgiving,” Weber said. “My husband hasn’t seen my full family in 19, 20 months.”
While some details of the latest change have yet to be clarified, Weber is one of many New Yorkers “extremely happy” and a little surprised by the announcement.