Make today a definite third time for us. We brought our two Canadian grandchildren (one 13 and one 11) down for an overnight visit and encountered the type of agent one unfortunately runs across every so often.

We strongly suspect he was disappointed when we immediately supplied the letters he asked for from our glove box. He spent a long time (2-3 minutes) reading through them, and finally handed them back, saying "You need to get these updated - go ahead." What we have are notarized letters with photocopies of the parents' passports attached, and a list of updated signatures.

I didn't know whether he was referring to the notarized letters themselves or to the signatures so politely asked him what we needed to update.

He replied not very nicely that the latest updated signatures were February 2014 and that's "too long."

I said "Thank you, sir," and off we drove.

Contrast that to taking the same grandson to Europe this summer and never being asked once to produce a letter by any U.S. or European officials.

As gglave remarked above, I preferred the extra three minutes at the booth to being sent to secondary, which this officer no doubt would have relished if it wouldn't have made him look foolish.

This is very much a FWIW and YMMV.

Cheers,
Fredd