I’m among a sea of Asians and white people (sprinkle black pepper into some grits) exiting our international flights preparing to go through immigrations & customs to enter Vancouver, Canada at the airport. Two friends and I pass through an immigrations agent and get interrogated about our occupations and our purposes for wanting to enter the country. “I’m an IT Technician and I saw cheap flights to Vancouver and jumped on it to visit for the weekend.” Simple, pragmatic reasoning. The immigrations agent approves my response and stamps my passport. Time to turn up!!! Right?

As we prepare to exit the airport there is another set of border agents (Canada Border Services Agency – CBSA) directing people. As the only 3 black men walking out, the border agents flag us down to look at our tickets. She grabs our tickets, looks down at them, then looks back at us, then looks back down at the tickets, then looks back at us. It was approximately a 6 second decision making process before she directed us to “Go to the right” (Straight was freedom; to the right was additional screening).

Punk ass bitch.

So we walk into the additional screening room; white walls and steel countertops. It had a real “rehabilitating” aura to it.  Three “intimidating” agents approach us and inform us we’ve been selected for additional screening (Yeah, whatever), and we were fortunate to be there during a special Canadian documentary screening of a day in the life of Canadian border control (yeah, whatever). We proceed with the additional search; full unpacking of clothes, dumping out every single compartment of my backpack, and nothing but judgmental & ignorant, commentary of all the items in my possession.

Then they run a background check. (FYI, The US and Canada have an agreement where they can access each other’s legal databases – and Canada has a list of convictions that deem you inadmissible to the country – http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/inadmissibility/who.asp). Soon after, they question me about my previous “run ins with authority, [misdemeanor] capers” (word to Makaveli) and etc etc. I acknowledge the one I was actually guilty of, but disregarded the trumped up ones. Blah blah blah. After being treated & spoken to like a criminal over some shit that occurred almost 10 years ago, they deemed me inadmissible due to my prior convictions.

A real one got kicked out of Canada on the premise of racial profiling.

This leads me right back to California less than 24 hours later.

After studying the Canadian law, I’m not as upset of getting “removed” from the country as I initially was. Law is law and it’s upon the member visiting the country to do necessary research on the laws before entering. I can live with that (on top of seeing other people go through the same due process as I).

What I do have a problem with though is the methodology and selection process that even led up to that point. Racial profiling. Although it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, it’s still a mighty discomforting (& re-affirming) feeling to know that I’m still perceived as a suspect based on my skin color beyond borders. C’est la vie. There will always be work to be done.

Don’t you all fret though and assume this trip was entirely a burnt mission. Since there weren’t any flights “deporting” back to Cali that night, they “allowed” me to stay the night at a hotel and check myself back in at the airport the next day by noon (otherwise they would’ve issued a warrant for my arrest…THUG LIFE!!!).  Just enough time to turn up in Vancouver for one night…

(this post shall be better known as “FUCK CANADA!!!)

(and i’m not fucking with Bieber, Canadian bacon, or Crown Royal anymore either…and I’m going to reduce my Drake music catalog 50%…and I’m glad the Grizzlies moved to Memphis and the Raptors got knocked out the playoffs by an AMERICAN team)