First time visiting Canada with Green Card (road trip)

[devusr 41]

We are planning to drive to Canada for 2 days to visit relatives of my wife. I'm a US Citizen and my wife is a permanent resident (Green Card and Sri Lankan Passport with US Visa stamp). She arrived t

 

We've never gone to Canada before.

 

1) How is the border crossing?

2) How long is the wait? Do we just wait in the card and present our documents when we pull up to the gate?

3) Will my wife only need her passport and green card?

4) Will there be any immigration related problems on entry to Canada or the return back to the US?

[Lemonslice 4,922]

You can check up border wait times on the CBSA website.

 

She seems to have the correct documents.  Border agents verify the documents, but also ask other questions/evaluate other factors before making their decision; no one here can assure you that there will be no problem entering Canada, but most US Permanent residents entry to Canada is uneventful.

 

If you have further questions, you can call CBSA directly, they answer calls and are super helpful. 

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/

 

Bon voyage!

 

[devusr 41]

Just now, Lemonslice said:

You can check up border wait times on the CBSA website.

 

She seems to have the correct documents.  Border agents verify the documents, but also ask other questions/evaluate other factors before making their decision; no one here can assure you that there will be no problem entering Canada, but most US Permanent residents entry to Canada is uneventful.

 

If you have further questions, you can call CBSA directly, they answer calls and are super helpful. 

https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/

 

Bon voyage!

 

 

 Ok great. On her return back to the US, will the US border agents make any issue?

[Lemonslice 4,922]

7 minutes ago, devusr said:

 

 Ok great. On her return back to the US, will the US border agents make any issue?

Most probably not, and she has some rights as a permanent resident.  Make sure to declare all items you're bringing back.

[top_secret 2,462]

Don't make the same mistake my friend's wife made that got her wrongly refused entry and bounced back to the US.  She had just arrived with an IR-1 visa, properly endorsed and and everything correct.  They live in upstate NY and decided to drive across on a day trip to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  Canadian Immigration told them that her "US VISA" did not make her admissible to Canada and sent her strait back to US CBP who were very sympathetic and helpful getting her signed back into the US properly.

 

When my friend was telling me about this, the best I can surmise went wrong is that the Canadian immigration agent probably asked her status in the US.  Being new to the US and probably not fully grasping all the finer details of her own immigration case, she probably incorrectly responded that she was in the US "on a visa" rather than as a Permanent Resident. I'm sure the IR-1 VISA in her passport that they had just spent the last two years working to get was fresh in her mind.  A US Visa does not get you into Canada and the Canadian Immigration Agent didn't follow up, look at the visa, figure it out or understand that she was a permanent resident and not just visiting the US on a visa.

 

So the moral of the story for them was, if Canadian Immigration asks questions about US Immigration status say "US PERMANENT RESIDENT" and be quite specific that the endorsed visa is their "temporary I-551 green card".  Canadian Immigration probably should have figured it out but did not.

Edited February 9 by top_secret

[ksh9256 21]

My wife and I did a road trip to Canada last year (Michigan at Bluewater bridge). She had her green card. No issues coming or going. We always bring as much info as possible, but greencard did the trick.

 

Canada border crossings are crazy busy at times here. We have a lot of Canadian workers that cross to work near Detroit. Really depends on where you cross.