U.S. border fears don’t always match reality
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Canadian travel to the United States dropped by roughly 30 per cent in 2025. This sharp decline reflects growing discomfort about border crossings. The reasons could be based on political climate, what people hear on the news, or what friends have heard or experienced.
In late December, the U.S. government announced it would begin mandating photographs of non-citizens at all land borders and airports. The measure, reported by CBC News in December, 2025, instantly caught the attention of Canadians who regularly cross the border for various reason such as shopping, family visits, or vacations. While the policy was presented as an administrative update, it added to that sense that border crossings are becoming more intrusive and tightly monitored.
Canada has been using facial recognition technology to verify the photos of travelers by air, both citizens and noncitizens, arriving from international destinations since 2019. This policy has largely faded into the background of routine travel. Yet the U.S. announcement reignited the conversation about surveillance, privacy, and what travelers might be exposing themselves to simply by crossing into another country.
Stories about border officers accessing personal information on laptops and cell phones and advice about wiping devices before travel have become common. The stories are usually fueled by warnings circulating among friends, families, online forums, and news sources. It may have happened to some people, but most border crossings are smooth and without issue. But for some Canadians, these warnings have been enough to cancel trips or decide that crossing the border simply isn’t worth the stress.
And yet, for many frequent travelers, the reality at the border has been far less dramatic. This gap between headlines and lived experience raises questions about how fear and concern are communicated to the public.
After decades of regularly crossing into the United States, some Canadians report that their interactions with U.S. border guards have been consistently congenial and even welcoming. Routine questions, brief checks, and friendly exchanges still define most crossings. This contradicts the alarming accounts that circulate socially, online, and reported on the news.
Ironically, one of the most distressing border experiences we had did not occur when entering the United States, but at the Canadian border when returning home to Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this case, we were returning from the US, had completed a COVID test, but had not yet received the negative results upon arrival at the Canadian border. Prepared to follow isolation rules and stocked with groceries for quarantine, we expected a simple process. Instead, we were taken into a back room at the Canadian border and sternly warned we would face an exorbitant fine for arriving without test results in hand.
The experience was frightening and humiliating. Despite repeatedly explaining our intention to comply with public health rules, we were reprimanded and told the fine would be enforced. Only after persistent requests were we allowed to turn back and wait in the United States for the test results.
In 2024, the auditor general found serious mismanagement in the federal government’s development of the ArriveCAN border app. Poor record‑keeping made it impossible to determine its final cost. Multiple agencies failed to follow basic management and contracting practices.
That episode, years later, still reminds us how quickly a routine border crossing can turn into a moment of fear and powerlessness. This did not happen at the U.S. border but the Canadian border.
The decline in Canadian travel to the U.S. may not be driven solely by what actually happens at the border, but by what people fear might happen. News headlines and stories passed from one traveler to another all shape decisions long before anyone reaches a border and most of the time reality does not match the fear. Most border crossings into the U.S. are without incident.