6 ms·

Jogger accidentally crosses U.S. border from B.C., gets detained for 2 weeks

40 points by cpncrunch 8y ago

curtis 8y ago
I can't help but feel like there's some missing information here. One piece of information that's missing from the headline but not the article is that the jogger was not a Canadian citizen, which may have complicated things, but doesn't seem like it should have complicated things so much that she needed to be detained for two weeks. One possibility is that the jogger not only wasn't a Canadian citizen, but may not have been a fluent english-speaker either. This still seems screwed up though.
mindcrime 8y ago
We really need to figure out how to get to a stateless, borderless society, and end this kind of absurdity. There is NO justification, none, zero, zilch, nada, for somebody being detained for two weeks for crossing an imaginary line while running on a beach. It's not just absurd, it's beyond absurd.
- jostonde 8y ago
  Sometimes reading such news I wonder if all our collective common sense is definitely gone.
- djohnston 8y ago
  i agree that the long term we probably will lose borders, but i can't see how that happens from here without extensive blood shed
- Someone1234 8y ago
  It wasn't like this pre-9/11. They would have just politely asked her to return to Canada.
- monksy 8y ago
  Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek. (There are very good reasons for having countries and borders.. you have to draw the line somewhere) The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that)
  - spankalee 8y ago
    > you have to draw the line somewhere Can you back up that assertion?
    - ahjushi 8y ago
      Without lines/borders, where does one nation end and another begin? If you are suggesting no nations, what laws are you subject to and what protections do you have?
    - _dps 8y ago
      No-borders only makes sense with anarchy or with global government. If there is more than one government in the world, they will have their own jurisdictions. Borders are the lines people use to separate jurisdictions in physical space (there are abstract separations as well). The border between the US and Mexico exists because the US and Mexico have different laws (including taxation and benefits). The border is where the US and Mexico have negotiated that one's rules stop holding and the other's rules start holding.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek. Why do you say so? There's nothing inherently "good" or "just" about nation states. The only nominal support I can find for such an idea is rooted in applying something like Dunbar's Number[1]. But arguably appealing to that is committing a variation of the naturalistic fallacy[2]. The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that) But who's going to conduct such an inquiry? The government? Oh, wait. It's the old "who watches the watchers?" problem. Me, I don't trust the government to provide oversight of itself. For the same reason I don't trust police to police themselves when it comes to excessive force cases, etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- colemannugent 8y ago
  >...crossing an imaginary line... But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them. She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries that hold wildly different world views. Until such a stateless utopia manifests itself we still need these lines. I agree on the two week detention being absurd. It should have taken less than a few hours to sort things out.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them. Sorry, but I can't help but read that as "it's not an imaginary line, it's an imaginary line". She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries A case can be made that "sovereign countries" are imaginary constructs that should be abolished, along with their imaginary lines of demarcation. I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but what I'm saying is that elevating that line to some concrete status is rooted in a worldview which has no objective reality. We can abolish borders, we just need to come together and muster up the will to do it. Which means, in part, finding solutions to all the problems the statists will use as arguments for preserving their lines.
    - colemannugent 8y ago
      >A case can be made that "sovereign countries" are imaginary constructs that should be abolished An exceedingly weak case can be made. It makes for a fun thought experiment but it falls apart really quickly. Say someone did manage to abolish all the states, why would that not just be the conqueror establishing a new global state? How would you enforce the rule no states allowed? Who would enforce it? If there was no global state to enforce the rule, what stops someone like me from organizing a state and easily conquering the stateless? >...elevating that line to some concrete status is rooted in a worldview which has no objective reality I'm curious what worldview you think is rooted in objective reality? To me a world where everyone just gets along and lives in cooperative communes is lacking a foundation in reality. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the state. I do however view it as a necessary evil. Remember, ultimately the state is still just people. Any gripe you have with the state is just a gripe against people with power. Saying that nobody should hold power is a cop out. The hard part of organizing the human race is trying to determine who should organize us. To that end it seems like a democratic state is more desirable than a hopelessly disorganized commune.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Open borders or good social safety nets, pick one. edit: if there's some way that we can pick both please feel free to tell everyone.
- ac29 8y ago
  2 weeks is a long time to be detained, but the problem is that she was traveling with no ID, no passport, and wasn't a citizen of either the US or Canada. She couldn't be discharged back into Canada immediately, because they had to confirm she was allowed to be there. I have a feeling if she was a Canadian citizen, this would have been a slap on the wrist, and she would've been let back into Canada within hours, if not immediately.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  Thankfully I live in the Schengen Area and crossing the border is usually no bigger deal than going to another town (aside of language on signs being different). After a while it becomes so natural that I had a very stressful moment once in the middle of a car trip from Poland to Croatia (Dubrovnik) after realizing that we will have to cross through Bosnia (for only a few kilometres actually) which is not in EU and that I haven't bought a passport. Fortunately, turned out that ID was enough to pass, although that wasn't guaranteed (and that Croatia, despite of being in EU, isn't actually in Schengen yet :P however, ID is officially enough there. It still meant that there were ridiculous border checks though).
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  Or we can just have common sense about a jogger accidentally crossing? Why do you jump to stateless/borderless? Let me tell you, that's absurd.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Let me tell you, that's absurd. Oh?
- lord_ring_11 8y ago
  Why is boundary around your house also not an absurdity? Can few people stay there tonight or permanently. Tgey might not respect you though.
sandworm101 8y ago
>>Roman, a citizen of France who had travelled to Canada to visit her mother in B.C. and work on her English, didn't have any government-issued ID or travel permits on her. Ok. Free legal advice: If you a citizen of country A visiting relatives in country B, don't go anywhere near country C without your passport. US authorities acted very reasonably here. Two weeks is not a long time considering she needed confirmation from multiple countries.
- kapnobatairza 8y ago
  I agree. It's not like we have some sort of magic communication system that can be used to send and receive information. It would take multiple days for a raven to fly from the USA to Canada to France.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    Funny, but look at it from the perspective of those actually involved. Canada doesn't have a magic spreadsheet of all the people currently allowed in the country. Nor does the US, or France. They have to check up on visas and such. And because this person is currently in custody, they cannot be released until they know there aren't any outstanding warrants in any of the three countries involved. But this does not avoid the fact she violated the law. In legal terms, she deliberately crossed the boarder. She didn't knowingly violate the law, but this isn't someone forced across the boarder against their will. "I didn't see the marker" isn't actually an excuse. Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. That decision too take time, and won't start until such a person's identity and status has already been assured.
    - mcphage 8y ago
      > Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. There’s no autonomous machinery that will prosecute someone unless it’s turned off. If nobody in the US did anything, then she would have jogged back into Canada and never have been aware that she stepped outside of its boundaries in the first place. So, no. Action would have been required to prosecute. No action would have meant no prosecution.
Hnrobert42 8y ago
How is this hacker news?
pissedOff2018 8y ago
This looks more like a case of entrapment. There was no indication that there is a line not to be crossed and this is a large public beach. It makes me angry to see a guest of our country (yes Canada) treated this way by our neighbor. You people have to get your shit together and stop treating your friends like criminals.
luckydata 8y ago
Sounds like the kind of stunts Iran pulls on tourists from time to time when they try to make a political statement.

40 points by cpncrunch 8y ago

I can't help but feel like there's some missing information here. One piece of information that's missing from the headline but not the article is that the jogger was not a Canadian citizen, which may have complicated things, but doesn't seem like it should have complicated things so much that she needed to be detained for two weeks. One possibility is that the jogger not only wasn't a Canadian citizen, but may not have been a fluent english-speaker either. This still seems screwed up though.

mindcrime 8y ago

We really need to figure out how to get to a stateless, borderless society, and end this kind of absurdity. There is NO justification, none, zero, zilch, nada, for somebody being detained for two weeks for crossing an imaginary line while running on a beach. It's not just absurd, it's beyond absurd.

jostonde 8y ago
Sometimes reading such news I wonder if all our collective common sense is definitely gone.
djohnston 8y ago
i agree that the long term we probably will lose borders, but i can't see how that happens from here without extensive blood shed
Someone1234 8y ago
It wasn't like this pre-9/11. They would have just politely asked her to return to Canada.
monksy 8y ago
Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek. (There are very good reasons for having countries and borders.. you have to draw the line somewhere) The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that)
- spankalee 8y ago
  > you have to draw the line somewhere Can you back up that assertion?
  - ahjushi 8y ago
    Without lines/borders, where does one nation end and another begin? If you are suggesting no nations, what laws are you subject to and what protections do you have?
  - _dps 8y ago
    No-borders only makes sense with anarchy or with global government. If there is more than one government in the world, they will have their own jurisdictions. Borders are the lines people use to separate jurisdictions in physical space (there are abstract separations as well). The border between the US and Mexico exists because the US and Mexico have different laws (including taxation and benefits). The border is where the US and Mexico have negotiated that one's rules stop holding and the other's rules start holding.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Stateless/borderless is an absurd goal to seek. Why do you say so? There's nothing inherently "good" or "just" about nation states. The only nominal support I can find for such an idea is rooted in applying something like Dunbar's Number[1]. But arguably appealing to that is committing a variation of the naturalistic fallacy[2]. The ridiculous treatment of the individual in the situation is something we should come down hard on that section of the government. (They should be facing an inquiry about that) But who's going to conduct such an inquiry? The government? Oh, wait. It's the old "who watches the watchers?" problem. Me, I don't trust the government to provide oversight of itself. For the same reason I don't trust police to police themselves when it comes to excessive force cases, etc. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
colemannugent 8y ago
>...crossing an imaginary line... But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them. She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries that hold wildly different world views. Until such a stateless utopia manifests itself we still need these lines. I agree on the two week detention being absurd. It should have taken less than a few hours to sort things out.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  But it's not an imaginary line, it's a line that two democratic countries agreed to create to separate them. Sorry, but I can't help but read that as "it's not an imaginary line, it's an imaginary line". She inadvertently crossed one of the most important lines that exists, a line that demarcates two sovereign countries A case can be made that "sovereign countries" are imaginary constructs that should be abolished, along with their imaginary lines of demarcation. I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but what I'm saying is that elevating that line to some concrete status is rooted in a worldview which has no objective reality. We can abolish borders, we just need to come together and muster up the will to do it. Which means, in part, finding solutions to all the problems the statists will use as arguments for preserving their lines.
  - colemannugent 8y ago
    >A case can be made that "sovereign countries" are imaginary constructs that should be abolished An exceedingly weak case can be made. It makes for a fun thought experiment but it falls apart really quickly. Say someone did manage to abolish all the states, why would that not just be the conqueror establishing a new global state? How would you enforce the rule no states allowed? Who would enforce it? If there was no global state to enforce the rule, what stops someone like me from organizing a state and easily conquering the stateless? >...elevating that line to some concrete status is rooted in a worldview which has no objective reality I'm curious what worldview you think is rooted in objective reality? To me a world where everyone just gets along and lives in cooperative communes is lacking a foundation in reality. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the state. I do however view it as a necessary evil. Remember, ultimately the state is still just people. Any gripe you have with the state is just a gripe against people with power. Saying that nobody should hold power is a cop out. The hard part of organizing the human race is trying to determine who should organize us. To that end it seems like a democratic state is more desirable than a hopelessly disorganized commune.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Open borders or good social safety nets, pick one. edit: if there's some way that we can pick both please feel free to tell everyone.
ac29 8y ago
2 weeks is a long time to be detained, but the problem is that she was traveling with no ID, no passport, and wasn't a citizen of either the US or Canada. She couldn't be discharged back into Canada immediately, because they had to confirm she was allowed to be there. I have a feeling if she was a Canadian citizen, this would have been a slap on the wrist, and she would've been let back into Canada within hours, if not immediately.
seba_dos1 8y ago
Thankfully I live in the Schengen Area and crossing the border is usually no bigger deal than going to another town (aside of language on signs being different). After a while it becomes so natural that I had a very stressful moment once in the middle of a car trip from Poland to Croatia (Dubrovnik) after realizing that we will have to cross through Bosnia (for only a few kilometres actually) which is not in EU and that I haven't bought a passport. Fortunately, turned out that ID was enough to pass, although that wasn't guaranteed (and that Croatia, despite of being in EU, isn't actually in Schengen yet :P however, ID is officially enough there. It still meant that there were ridiculous border checks though).
asdsa5325 8y ago
Or we can just have common sense about a jogger accidentally crossing? Why do you jump to stateless/borderless? Let me tell you, that's absurd.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Let me tell you, that's absurd. Oh?
lord_ring_11 8y ago
Why is boundary around your house also not an absurdity? Can few people stay there tonight or permanently. Tgey might not respect you though.

sandworm101 8y ago

>>Roman, a citizen of France who had travelled to Canada to visit her mother in B.C. and work on her English, didn't have any government-issued ID or travel permits on her. Ok. Free legal advice: If you a citizen of country A visiting relatives in country B, don't go anywhere near country C without your passport. US authorities acted very reasonably here. Two weeks is not a long time considering she needed confirmation from multiple countries.

kapnobatairza 8y ago
I agree. It's not like we have some sort of magic communication system that can be used to send and receive information. It would take multiple days for a raven to fly from the USA to Canada to France.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Funny, but look at it from the perspective of those actually involved. Canada doesn't have a magic spreadsheet of all the people currently allowed in the country. Nor does the US, or France. They have to check up on visas and such. And because this person is currently in custody, they cannot be released until they know there aren't any outstanding warrants in any of the three countries involved. But this does not avoid the fact she violated the law. In legal terms, she deliberately crossed the boarder. She didn't knowingly violate the law, but this isn't someone forced across the boarder against their will. "I didn't see the marker" isn't actually an excuse. Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. That decision too take time, and won't start until such a person's identity and status has already been assured.
  - mcphage 8y ago
    > Someone in the US has to actively decide not to prosecute. There’s no autonomous machinery that will prosecute someone unless it’s turned off. If nobody in the US did anything, then she would have jogged back into Canada and never have been aware that she stepped outside of its boundaries in the first place. So, no. Action would have been required to prosecute. No action would have meant no prosecution.

Hnrobert42 8y ago

How is this hacker news?

pissedOff2018 8y ago

This looks more like a case of entrapment. There was no indication that there is a line not to be crossed and this is a large public beach. It makes me angry to see a guest of our country (yes Canada) treated this way by our neighbor. You people have to get your shit together and stop treating your friends like criminals.

luckydata 8y ago

Sounds like the kind of stunts Iran pulls on tourists from time to time when they try to make a political statement.