The US and Canada are both highly developed countries with friendly relations who share a long border and a language, have several cultural and historical traits in common, and are close trade partners as well as military allies.
This sort of situation elsewhere in the world often results in some kind of free movement, or at least *easier* movement between the two countries – e.g., the British Ireland, the EU, or Australia/NZ. But to my knowledge Canada and the US don’t have any such agreement. Why is that? Has there ever been any serious plan for it?
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Canada says no because it would result in massive brain drain for their tech sector.
With the exception of large-scale trade, we’ve infortunately moved in the opposite direction, where it’s actually more restrictive for individuals to cross. Some of this was an over-reaction to terrorist attacks in the early 2000s, but there’s just enough incompatibility in certain laws that they can’t just open the borders. Guns are a big one and differences in visa laws are another.
That being said, it isn’t hard to visit. You just need a passport, an enhanced driver’s license, or a NEXUS card. Your passport isn’t even stamped.
Canada wouldn’t want that.
Traveling between the two is super simple. Its the employment and resident status that is harder.
It used to be easy to go to Canada. When we got married and spent 2 weeks in a cabin on the US/Canadian border we crossed back and forth whenever we wanted. We only had to show our drivers license when we walked over into Fort Frances for pizza and beer from International Falls
We used to have something close to that with Canada, for visitation at least. It was causing problems so was stopped. I do not know specifics.
No one is really trying? If Europe can figure out how to do it there’s no excuse for the US and Canada not being able to get it together. It bugs me that this isn’t a thing already.
The US and Canada already have some pretty lenient visa waivers. I think Canadians can be here up to 6 months, and I believe the same is true for Americans in Canada.
I think one part is demand. Despite most of Canada living in the lower third of the country, there’s not a ton of population centers right on the border. There’s the two Niagara and I guess you could toss Buffalo into that mix, Detroit/Windsor, and some could argue the Seattle and Vancouver (BC) are close enough though my looking at Google Maps looks like there’s a lot of empty space as you get into the further flung areas outside of the core metro. So I don’t know if there is a huge demand for more Americans or Canadians, who don’t live close to the border, to go to and from each country. I would like to look at making things as easy as possible for those living in the population centers, particularly those who are commuting to/from for work or business.
Another is that being two relatively wealthy nations with our own industries, there’s a lot of protectionism on both sides of the border.
There’s also larger issues such as the issue of guns or the issue of health care. that’s 10 different agreements the US would need to hash out in terms of Medicare and Medicaid vs the Canadian provinces, not to mention all the private insurance plans.
Up until 2008 you didn’t even need a passport to visit Canada. Now you need a passport like you would any other country, but it’s still really easy to visit.
I assume it’s because it would take a lot of political capital that could be spent elsewhere. Immigration is a deadlocked issue people get very touchy about and there simply isn’t a pressing demand for free movement to be implemented on either side to my knowledge.
Canada has a variety of free movement agreements with other countries, particularly with young people and/or with other Commonwealth countries. Free movement between America and Canada could create a back door for non-Canadians to gain entry to the U.S. which is a national security threat the U.S. would never accept.
Closeness actually works to the disadvantage of a proposal like this in practical political terms. They are less than 1/10th our population, 90% of their population lives within 250 km of our border, we share a language. Canada has to try to maintain distance from the US or they’ll end up stated, can’t blame them for it but it was like pulling teeth just to get free trade a few decades ago.
There’s easy movement between the US and Canada. There are border checks, but no visas needed for visiting, longer stays than other no visa countries, there are programs that mean we get extra or easier options when applying to work in each other’s countries.
It doesn’t look exactly like other friendly border arrangements, but then other friendly border arrangements don’t look exactly like each other either (Schengen zone is one agreement despite being lots of countries).
I’d assume that an even more open border doesn’t happen because neither country particularly wants it.
The US would probably benefit slightly economically, but I doubt it would be much, it would be very expensive to legislate and implement, and there are always security concerns.
Canada has fewer people than California. They already get tugged in whatever direction the US goes. This would pull them even harder. They’d also suffer serious brain drain because the US pays higher and has a lower cost of living, not to mention better weather in almost the entire country. When this comes up on r/askaCanadian, they write that a lot of the immigration to Canada would be people looking for marginally higher social benefits, but since you don’t see people flooding from Texas to the northeast for that purpose, I doubt it’d happen to Canada either. But it could.
Because the US and Canada aren’t in a union of countries that makes their laws similar and synergize well.
We used to. When I was a kid you didn’t need a passport to cross the border. Things have slowly tightened up as the US has gotten more serious about border security.
It used to be easier before 9/11. Now border security is much more strict.
Because Canada would cease to exist if Canadians realize how much more they would get being in the United States. Remember, Canada exists because its the Un-American.
Canada doesn’t want it.
Salaries are much lower there. If there was EU-like freedom of movement and employment across the border, the bulk of skilled Canadian professionals would migrate south rather quickly.
Also, the border used to be a lot easier to cross. You used to not even require a passport, simply showing a driver’s license or other ID. . .that changed after the 9/11 attacks. The increased focus on anti-terrorism resulted in stricter border enforcement.
We do
Last time I went to Canada it took me about 9 hours to drive up to the border and about a half hour to cross over. It’s pretty easy, especially at the less busy crossings
I believe there’s some connections to the isolationism period the US had in the great depression. Canada had to adapt and further strengthen their relations with other provinces.
It’s not *our* idea. Canada’s immigration system is, basically, set up to prevent their job market being swamped by the much-larger American labor pool. Officially, they’d never go for it.
Canada exists only as a political, rather than cultural, identity distinct from America. Remember, it was formed when there were some white English speaking Anglo-Saxon protestants who were still loyal to the British crown stayed behind while other white English-speaking Anglo-Saxon protestants left, and that has been the defining feature – anti-Americanism, earlier in being more right wing and loyal to Britain, and now being more left wing in certain ways. They try to assert some kind of top-down cultural differences through their public broadcasts, but they never stick
If free movement happened, we’d see that completely erode, and the lawrentian elite don’t want that
Mainly because Canada wouldn’t want it
To keep out the wildlings
Canada would never go for it. Their national identity is built on being different from and better than us.
It has de facto free movement between the two- it’s not especially difficult.
Pre 9/11 it was near effortless to go between the two.
There are certain things that make movement between Canada and border states easier. Certain states have enchanted licenses that allow the holder to enter Canada by land or water with no passport, only with the license. I have my license enhanced but I rarely go to Canada despite being only 30 minutes from the border.
There’s a reason it took until the 90s to get free trade with Canada. From the American perspective we’d be stoked for more integration, but that sort of thing tends to inspire a *WE’RE SURRENDERING OUR SOVEREIGNTY* moral panic up north
Canada is fairly protectionist and wants there to be more political division between the two countries for a number of reasons. They also don’t want immigration from Latin America to become more prominent but their government won’t say that out loud.
the two countries are already big enough
We used to be able to travel easily at one point without needing a passport.
Hell, my family and I were able to visit Niagara Falls on the Canadian side back in *2004*, so it doesn’t seem to have been 9/11 or anything that changed it to the stupid law we have now.
We had something like that before 2001. My family went to Niagara Falls on vacation when I was a kid, and none of us had passports. (Well, I guess my dad did, but I don’t think they asked for it.) But then 9/11 happened and the rules got a lot tighter.
The politics of it now would be a lot more complicated.
Individuals in both countries would be better off if we had a more close arrangement.
Protectionists in both countries do not see the country as just a collection of individuals – they see the country as an ideal that warrants individual sacrifice.
So, in their minds (especially Canadian nationalists), it doesn’t matter if more of an open border with the US would benefit Canadians individually. To them, it is bad, because it would infringe on their perception of the ideal – an ideal of a unique and differentiated society from the US.
I think it’s almost embarrassing that we haven’t been able to work something out in terms of open borders. European countries with ancient feuds have done so – countries with legitimately different cultures and histories. More often than not, histories that involve severe conflict with one another. Yet, we can’t seem to agree to open borders between two countries with virtually no feuds, and who are mostly culturally indistinguishable.
PLUS, the Canada-US border is probably the most nonsensical, ridiculous imaginary line that has ever been contrived between two countries outside of Africa. Most of our borders are literally imaginary lines – lines that cut through multiple ecosystems, geographies, climates and watersheds. The geopolitical make up of Canada makes absolutely no sense.
Canadians do not want our guns coming across the border. It’s pretty much as simple as that.
Basically for the same reason we have no free movement with Mexico (in that case, drugs and migrants).