Pandemic travel bans divide loved ones across borders
NEW YORK » Quintin Sweat and Renée Harrison live only 15 minutes apart by car, with the U.S.-Canada border between them.
But the couple, who got engaged in 2019, has only been able to be together three times during the pandemic. Travel restrictions mean Harrison must drive four hours from her Windsor, Ontario home to the Toronto airport in order to fly to Detroit where Sweat lives. For Sweat, it means a mandated two-week stay in Canada.
The two even drove to the outer limits of their respective borders just to see each other but they were still so far away that they “looked like dots,” Sweat said.
“She’s gone to the edge of Windsor and I’ve gone to the edge of Detroit and we can see each other, but we can’t actually be with each other,” he said. They have delayed their wedding to 2022.
Since the start of the pandemic, a constantly changing and confusing web of travel restrictions have separated loved ones around the world. For people whose lives cross international borders and for immigrants who leave their homes behind to move to a new country, not knowing when they can see their relatives again compounds the pain of separation.
For Sweat and Harrison, there is some relief in sight when Canada begins letting in fully vaccinated Americans on Aug. 9. Harrison still can’t drive in to Detroit, however, as the U.S. is restricting entry by car from Canada and Mexico until at least Aug. 21.
The U.S. still bars travelers from specific countries — Brazil, China, India, Iran, South Africa and much of Europe. The European Union recommended allowing in U.S. travelers in June, although individual European countries make their own rules. Britain opened its borders to fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. and the European Union on Monday.
The U.S. airline lobby is pushing the U.S. government to reopen travel with “low-risk countries,” and European officials have pressed their case as well. But a White House official said July 26 that the U.S. will keep existing international travel restrictions in place for now because of surging infection rates due to the delta variant.
Alyson Sicard, who lives in Tampa, Florida, with her husband, who is on a research visa, lost a relative to suicide several weeks ago and her father got married in June. She has not been able to return to her home in France for any of it because of the U.S. travel restrictions
“My neighbor can go to my father’s wedding but I cannot,” Sicard said. “I told