Feds urged to tackle pot-border worries
WASHINGTON — Canadians involved in the legal cannabis industry are facing deep potholes on the road to entering the United States — and immigration lawyers say the federal government needs to help them navigate a way through.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency has sent tremors through the country’s burgeoning cannabis sector with word that legalization in Canada won’t change the fact that U.S. laws treat marijuana as a banned substance, and industry workers as drug traffickers.
Despite the fact that some jurisdictions in North America permit the use of medical and recreational marijuana, U.S. federal law continues to prohibit its sale, possession, production and distribution, an agency spokesperson said in a statement.
“Consequently, crossing the border or arriving at a U.S. port of entry in violation of this law may result in denied admission, seizure, fines, and apprehension,” the statement said.
“Working in or facilitating the proliferation of the legal marijuana industry in U.S. states where it is deemed legal or Canada may affect a foreign national’s admissibility to the United States.”
Having fast-track, frequent traveller status such as a Nexus card is no guarantee either, warned Jon Jurmain, an immigration lawyer based in Thorold, Ont., outside St. Catharines.
“I have a U.S. citizen client who had his Nexus pulled because a dog smelled pot on this passenger, and my client answered a question about smoking pot and admitted to previously smoking pot,” Jurmain said in an email. “No pot was found.” The revelations are based on existing laws and policies and do not represent any change in how U.S. border officials approach the issue of cannabis. They were first reported by Politico Pro Canada, a division of the U.S. website Politico.
Border Security Minister Bill Blair said Tuesday he doesn’t believe anything is going to change at the border after Oct. 17, the date the federal government has set for legalization to take effect.
“My expectation is that border security agents on both sides of the border will continue to do their job to protect the sovereignty and security of their country in the way in which they have been doing it in the past, and my expectation is that it will continue.”
Lawyers with expertise in helping people cross the Canada-U.S. border said it should fall to the federal government — not travellers who are taking part in a perfectly legal business enterprise — to help pave the way.
Henry Chang, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer with Blaney McMurtry who specializes in Canada-U.S. matters, said the two countries have consulted productively on immigration issues in the past during the presidency of Donald Trump, and this time should be no different.
“The best chance these individuals have is for the Canadian government to pressure the U.S. government to issue a policy directive saying that employees and investors in Canadian cannabis companies are not subject to the controlled substance trafficking bar,” Chang said.
B.C.’s Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said Monday that he’s concerned the U.S. might bar provincial government employees from travelling across the border because they work in the province’s new legal cannabis branch.
That’s raised the risk that hundreds of B.C. government employees could find themselves unable to travel to the U.S.because they staff the new public cannabis retail stores and distribution branch, including front-line workers, managers and ministry officials. The first B.C. government store, in Kamloops, will open on the day of federal legalization.
“We’ve been making it clear to the federal government that this is a serious issue,” Farnworth said. He called it an “unintended consequence” of Canada’s legalization.
For its part, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency insists it has no plans to ask any potspecific questions without cause. But Ottawa immigration lawyer Warren Creates said he fears some agents might find it a useful catch-all to deny admittance to anyone they decide shouldn’t be allowed in.
“If a U.S. border officer has some reason not to like the person in front of them who is being examined for entry — some reason — then that officer is more likely to ask the question: ‘Have you ever been a user of cannabis or been involved in the cannabis industry?’
Creates doesn’t expect the question to be asked frequently, “but I think an officer faced with an unlikable person who has not yet presented grounds for inadmissibility . . . would be more inclined to use that tool.”