Americans, Canadians eager for border to finally reopen
WASHINGTON — The pressure is mounting on the U.S. and Canadian governments to lift or at least loosen restrictions at their shared border after 16 months, with seemingly no endpoint in sight.
With COVID-19 vaccinations rising and infection rates plummeting, border communities, travel groups and long-separated families are anxious for officials, at minimum, to lay out a plan for reopening the 5,500-mile land boundary. Instead, the governments announced another extension of the restrictions through at least July 21.
“They are very frustrated because nobody can really explain what the holdup is,” said U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., who co-chairs the CanadaUnited States Inter-Parliamentary Group.
“You look at the effects here in Michigan or in northern New York — any one of the border states. There (are) some real impacts happening.”
Business owners, would-be tourists and people with property on the other side of the border are fretting about losing out on a second summer season. Families and friends long separated — many now vaccinated — are eager to reunite. Huizenga’s wife, Natalie, who is from the Toronto area, hasn’t seen her parents in Canada for more than a year and a half.
High-profile exceptions, such as for National Hockey League players during the Stanley Cup Final, have disgusted more than a few people.
“So COVID doesn’t affect you if you’re skating in the NHL?” Huizenga said. “What I think drives people crazy are the inconsistencies.”
The Canadian government did make a change at the border, effective Monday, allowing fully vaccinated Canadian citizens or permanent residents who test negative for COVID-19 to return to the country without observing some of Canada’s strict 14-day quarantine rules.
But fully vaccinated Americans who want to cross for nonessential reasons still may not enter. That’s despite the recommendation last month of an expert panel of the Canadian ministry of health that advised allowing fully vaccinated travelers to enter Canada as long as they had a negative COVID-19 test.
On the U.S. side, officials have continued to resist travel exceptions for the reunification of family members or unmarried couples.
Members of Congress have significantly upped the pressure on President Joe Biden to loosen the restrictions, pointing out that he had wanted the country to be mostly “back to normal” by the Fourth of July.
Setting up expert task forces is “not a good sign that things are going to move quickly,” said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.
“Because working groups don’t tend to move very quickly in the government,” Trautman said, “I would stand by an estimate I gave recently, which is that by Labor Day fully vaccinated travelers will be able to cross, regardless of nationality and trip purpose.”
U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., said the refusal to open the border doesn’t follow science or even the position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully inoculated individuals can return to pre-pandemic activity without masking, quarantining or social distancing.
“For the last 16 months, we’ve been told the gamechanging moment would be the availability of vaccines. Now, 37 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated and nearly 50 percent of Americans. Those people should be allowed to cross the border,” Higgins said.
“There’s only two people that can make this happen: the president of the United States and the prime minister of Canada. They need to engage and develop a plan.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken a cautious approach. He initially said he’d relax the border rules only after at least 75 percent of Canadians got their first shot and 20 percent were fully vaccinated. Ottawa has since raised that benchmark to 75 percent fully vaccinated.
Rep. Andy Levin, DMich., is optimistic that Canada can “rocket past” that 75 percent within a few weeks, noting the country’s national health care system and lack of right-wing vaccine hesitancy.
“At that point, it’s time for Canada and the U.S. to reopen the border,” Levin said.