Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry OP, but your son broke US law by entering the USA (even in transit) on a foreign passport. The officer went very easy on you. If he doesn’t want to be a US citizen, then he needs to formally renounce it. Until then, he needs to file and pay US taxes annually by the way. Since Canada also has birthright citizenship, this shouldn’t be a difficult concept for you to understand.

Ok I see. So my son should have been detained legally and then what? He would stay in jail until he got his US passport? Or until he renounced his US citizenship?

Would I also be detained and put in jail because I facilitated his crime due to misplacing his SSN over 15 years ago?

TBH we were relieved we didn’t end up in El Salvador. We were also relieved when our plane (American airlines) didn’t flip over when we landed at Toronto Pearson.

You should have been sent to secondary at a minimum. And you could have been denied boarding. Honestly you should know better. Again, it would be best for your son to renounce his US citizenship to avoid these issues in the future, but my guess is that you se me some value in holding on to it.

PS, was just in Canada. Great shopping with that low Canadian dollar, but I was surprised by how much the country had deteriorated since my last visit five years ago.

And then after secondary and denied boarding-- what next?

The denied boarding would have occurred on the Mexico end and you would have had to go to the US Consulate to get him a passport or rebook a direct flight to Canada. Technically US citizens must present US docs when leaving the US too if asked (although there is no exit immigration), so he could have made him go to the Miami Passport Office
If you think the Miami airport is bad, try that place. Honestly, Canadians aren’t very popular in the US right now, so he could have made your life miserable by merely detaining you long enough to miss your flight. There’s plenty they can do - don’t give them the opportunity.

Well it's a good thing he was reasonable because it would have taken weeks to get a US passport, so we would just hang out at the passport office in Miami or Mexico?

Anyway I just mention this because people have asked about whether they need to travel with 2 passports as dual citizens of US and another country. And tbh, I've traveled with him before across the US Canada border and it's been brought up most times but we've never been detained. It did seem like a bigger issue this time.

Also I have read it's better to wait until age 18 to renounce US citizenship because I can't do this on his behalf and it's a decision that ideally isn't made by a minor. Apparently if a minor does renounce, they can request to be reinstated within 6 months after reaching age 18.

We've only been detained ever on the Canadian side when he was a baby because we had different last names and I was traveling without his dad as a single parent and they thought I was kidnapping him. I just had to show the court order allowing me to travel with him without father present. Now that he can talk, it's hasn't been an issue.

I'm just mentioning all of this for information to others, hope it's helpful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry OP, but your son broke US law by entering the USA (even in transit) on a foreign passport. The officer went very easy on you. If he doesn’t want to be a US citizen, then he needs to formally renounce it. Until then, he needs to file and pay US taxes annually by the way. Since Canada also has birthright citizenship, this shouldn’t be a difficult concept for you to understand.

Ok I see. So my son should have been detained legally and then what? He would stay in jail until he got his US passport? Or until he renounced his US citizenship?

Would I also be detained and put in jail because I facilitated his crime due to misplacing his SSN over 15 years ago?

TBH we were relieved we didn’t end up in El Salvador. We were also relieved when our plane (American airlines) didn’t flip over when we landed at Toronto Pearson.

You should have been sent to secondary at a minimum. And you could have been denied boarding. Honestly you should know better. Again, it would be best for your son to renounce his US citizenship to avoid these issues in the future, but my guess is that you se me some value in holding on to it.

PS, was just in Canada. Great shopping with that low Canadian dollar, but I was surprised by how much the country had deteriorated since my last visit five years ago.

And then after secondary and denied boarding-- what next?

The denied boarding would have occurred on the Mexico end and you would have had to go to the US Consulate to get him a passport or rebook a direct flight to Canada. Technically US citizens must present US docs when leaving the US too if asked (although there is no exit immigration), so he could have made him go to the Miami Passport Office
If you think the Miami airport is bad, try that place. Honestly, Canadians aren’t very popular in the US right now, so he could have made your life miserable by merely detaining you long enough to miss your flight. There’s plenty they can do - don’t give them the opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry OP, but your son broke US law by entering the USA (even in transit) on a foreign passport. The officer went very easy on you. If he doesn’t want to be a US citizen, then he needs to formally renounce it. Until then, he needs to file and pay US taxes annually by the way. Since Canada also has birthright citizenship, this shouldn’t be a difficult concept for you to understand.

Ok I see. So my son should have been detained legally and then what? He would stay in jail until he got his US passport? Or until he renounced his US citizenship?

Would I also be detained and put in jail because I facilitated his crime due to misplacing his SSN over 15 years ago?

TBH we were relieved we didn’t end up in El Salvador. We were also relieved when our plane (American airlines) didn’t flip over when we landed at Toronto Pearson.

You should have been sent to secondary at a minimum. And you could have been denied boarding. Honestly you should know better. Again, it would be best for your son to renounce his US citizenship to avoid these issues in the future, but my guess is that you se me some value in holding on to it.

PS, was just in Canada. Great shopping with that low Canadian dollar, but I was surprised by how much the country had deteriorated since my last visit five years ago.

And then after secondary and denied boarding-- what next?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the OP reporting back.

I took the ADO public bus from Cancun to Merida for $40, a “luxury” coach. To get to downtown Cancun and the bus station from the resort area in Cancun, I took the R1 city bus for 12 pesos. Both felt very safe and it was comfortable.

I travelled during the day however. I would not hang around downtown Cancun at night but it was fine walking around during the day.

There is also the Mayan train but this has been operational for only about a year and I heard that it was not completely reliable yet.
I don’t know how true that is, I later heard that Mexicans opposed its development because it’s meant for tourists and was costly to build, many opposed it since the country remains poor.

Other things I learned on this trip - the “narcos” or drug cartels are mostly in the north, and they are also feared by locals in Mexico.
Tourists do not need be afraid of violence everywhere in Mexico.
Merida in particular felt very safe, and I’m a very cautious traveller.

Also, Miami airport layover is kind of a nightmare! 2.5 hour layover became less than 2 hours because plane takeoff was delayed by one hour. You have to take the sky train to next terminal to exit and enter customs, grab your luggage and re enter security, and then walk to the gate (which in our case meant going back to the terminal we started). We arrived at the gate 15 min before boarding started, but that was because we didn’t have any checked luggage to pick up.

At customs there is an “express connection” line but it didn’t seem any faster than other lines because it was longer than lines for visitors and visa holders.

Lastly, my son who was born in DC while I was a research fellow at NIH (returned to Canada when he was 18 months old), was asked why he wasn’t carrying his US passport and only had his Canadian passport — even though we were only entering the US on a layover in Miami back to Toronto. I said he has resided in Canada since he was a toddler and he hasn’t lived in the US since, and my son chimed in earnestly that he doesn’t know what his SSN is anymore (I misplaced it) so he can’t apply….there was a beat and then the officer decided we weren’t drug cartels or trying to illegally enter the US so our final destination was Toronto and not El Salvador.

Next time I think we’ll just take the bus back to Cancun and fly direct to Toronto because there a lots of Toronto-Cancun flights and that layover in Miami is a PITA.

Thanks for the report! The last time we went to Mexico, we rented a car to drive around Cancun and the Mayan Riviera. We also drove it up to Merida. Merida was such a nice city! I would go back and spend more time there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry OP, but your son broke US law by entering the USA (even in transit) on a foreign passport. The officer went very easy on you. If he doesn’t want to be a US citizen, then he needs to formally renounce it. Until then, he needs to file and pay US taxes annually by the way. Since Canada also has birthright citizenship, this shouldn’t be a difficult concept for you to understand.

Ok I see. So my son should have been detained legally and then what? He would stay in jail until he got his US passport? Or until he renounced his US citizenship?

Would I also be detained and put in jail because I facilitated his crime due to misplacing his SSN over 15 years ago?

TBH we were relieved we didn’t end up in El Salvador. We were also relieved when our plane (American airlines) didn’t flip over when we landed at Toronto Pearson.

You should have been sent to secondary at a minimum. And you could have been denied boarding. Honestly you should know better. Again, it would be best for your son to renounce his US citizenship to avoid these issues in the future, but my guess is that you se me some value in holding on to it.

PS, was just in Canada. Great shopping with that low Canadian dollar, but I was surprised by how much the country had deteriorated since my last visit five years ago.