MONTREAL (Diya TV) – A Canadian woman traveling with a legal passport and even the Best US Credit Card for Canadian citizens, says she was turned away at the U.S. border and told she needed a valid immigrant visa in order to visit the country.
Manpreet Kooner, a Canadian citizen born to Indian parents, resides in Montreal with her fiancee, where she works in a science lab at a local college. She was traveling to Vermont with a group of friends – all of whom were white – for a spa day, Sunday afternoon. However, the group would never reach their final destination, at least Kooner wouldn’t.
Kooner said she was held at the border for six hours before being turned away.
At one point, she said, a border agent told her: “‘I know you may feel like you’ve been Trumped,'” an apparent reference to U.S. President Donald Trump.
She was told she’d need to apply for the immigrant visa at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa. Kooner said when she visited on Monday, embassy officials told her they couldn’t help and that she would need to contact U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“I’m speechless,” she told CBC. “There are no answers.”
Kooner’s story is the latest in a string of recent tales involving Canadian travelers scrutinized or turned away by U.S. border agents.
Last month, for instance, a woman from the Montreal suburb of Brossard said she was denied entry after being fingerprinted, photographed and questioned in detail about her religion and her views on Trump.
Kooner stopped short of saying race played a factor in the incident, but said some of her friends have reached out to her to tell her that could be the case. “People have said we need to take that into account here, because unfortunately, yeah, my skin color is brown,” she said.
Canadians traveling to the U.S. for the purposes of visiting are typically not required to obtain an immigrant visa. Canadians who are intending to immigrate or those planning to marry a U.S. citizen are among those who do need visas. Kooner does not fall under either category. Kooner has spent more than $1,000 on tickets to attend a musical festival in Miami at the end of the month, and planned to return to that city in May for her bachelorette party.
Of course, there are other reasons why someone might be turned away when traveling from Canada to the US. For example, although it does not seem to be the case in this incident, if you have any convictions on your Canadian Criminal Record (CCR) you can be denied entry. Criminal records in Canada can, however, be suspended through pardons and waivers. To learn more about criminal record suspension law, head to pardonsandwaivers.com.
For now, Kooner has said she is now thinking about selling her tickets and cancelling the party. She said the thought of having to cross the border now makes her feel sick.
She said she feels like the border agents singled her out and didn’t ask to speak to her friends.
“I feel targeted. I’m set aside from everyone else, and I feel helpless because I keep asking, ‘What do I need to do?'”
Information from CBC contributed to this report.
