Immigration Irony

Today's weather (Vancouver) High = 20 Low = 10
Sunny

Just got off the flight yesterday. The jet lag strategy has helped somewhat. Oversleeping prior to getting on the flight was able to ease the symptoms of jet lag, but it couldn't solve the fundamental problem of getting the body adapted to a new time zone. For that, the only solution is time, and it usually takes me a week.

Unfortunately I had a real negative experience with Canada immigration while coming back to my 'home country'. Basically I got pulled out of the main line once I had picked up my bags at the airport, and then taken into a side room for intense searching and questioning.

The irony here is that I've mainly had pleasant experiences with the immigration in the People's Republic of China, which is primarily a communist country. For the most part they are swift, efficient, and courteous. The common routine is to have them scan the passport while you wait for a short while and they stamp you in or out. Usually there are no questions asked. Afterwards, you are offered to evaluate their service level from 'satisfied' to 'not satisfied' and so forth.

It's likely that the whole 'customer service' setup at China immigration is just a big show to get positive face, and the ratings don't really accomplish much. But if we take an objective point of view based on multiple experiences, I've always found them to do a good job and have consistently been treated courteously and with respect.

It is with sadness to say that the complete opposite happens with immigration in my home country. For starters, there are no offers to evaluate service. Secondly, they really seem to have it in for returnees from Asia and this is based on multiple stories from friends and other Shanghai expats.

They don't tell you this anywhere on the form, but from experience you will certainly discover that you must enter your Shanghai address and enter the visitors lineup for Canada if you are planning to come back for the summer, and so forth. If you make a mistake on either of these points, then you'll get treated like an idiot. That is to say, if you're an expat, then do not enter the Canada residents line and do not enter any Canada addresses on the immigration form.

I was clear to follow this protocol, but the nutcases behind the desk still gave me the third degree in terms of their line of questioning. I had every single item in my bag searched. Including the files on my computers. Who knows, maybe they were looking for porn, or some other items that would fit the profile from a single male traveler returning from Asia.

It is also worth mentioning that bringing in DVDs from Asia is most definitely a bad idea. I didn't have a single DVD in my luggage, nor were there any problems with my computer. My answers to their questions lined up with what was in the bags, and that was that.

If you have large quantities of DVDs from Asia then I would suggest

a. Leave them over there and enjoy them in Asia
b. If you are leaving permanently, then either sell them off to other expats and/or
c. upload and store the movies on an external hard drive, your smart phone, a USB, etc. etc. Even better, use encryption technology so that if you do get searched at immigration and they plug the hard drive into a computer or something, it won't look like movies.

At any rate, there's not much point in elaborating or trying to lodge a formal complaint about this. A conflict with immigration is inevitable and they'd most certainly go after Asia expats to begin with, as I / we are effectively enjoying a much better life over there with teaching credentials and other documents that were obtained from my home country. In other words, they are punishing me for being a brain drain, along with multiple other Canadians.

At best it's just an invasion of privacy that has to be endured and it only happens once every year or two. Thank goodness there are no exit customs. Meanwhile, this is motivating to double check that I have indeed declared non-residency and to make sure that I'm not paying any tax. Heaven forbid my tax dollars would support an incompetent government department like immigration that acts worse than a communist country when it comes to treating its own citizens.