Originally Posted by
bostontraveler
But the point is not about people who have convictions on their record. It is about prior USE at ANY TIME in one's past. And that is absurd.
And there is more than abundant evidence that CBP is most definitely applying THAT logic and excluding foreign visitors simply for past use.
Lacking the source material, it's unclear what the precise question was. If it was simply "have you ever smoked X?," then there is no answer that meets the requirements for applying the ineligibility by itself. If it was followed up with "have you ever been ARRESTED?" and "what was the result?" and that series of questioning leads to the applicant admitting to having been convicted of a drug offense, however minor or however long ago, then we have a traveler in need of a waiver of ineligibility.
There's a lot of paperwork involved in making these things happen, so refusals of this sort are typically very much by-the-book and meet each of several requirements in the operations manual (which are more restrictive than just the text of the statute). There are also redress avenues if a traveler feels the law has been misapplied, such as DHS TRIP. Meeting the ineligibility standards without any history of conviction is a very tricky process indeed. Given the fact that this story is from a Canadian, the most likely scenario is the traveler got busted in the States many moons ago and figured (incorrectly) that it just didn't matter anymore.
Originally Posted by
bostontraveler
But the point is not about people who have convictions on their record. It is about prior USE at ANY TIME in one's past. And that is absurd.
And there is more than abundant evidence that CBP is most definitely applying THAT logic and excluding foreign visitors simply for past use.
No. It is very sane advice. Because why does CBP need to know if an Italian used marijuana last week or 30 years ago?
Dissecting- you are conflating two different issues. The fact that someone smoked marijuana does not equate to a conviction.
What CBP is doing is asking people if they ever USED an illicit drug and then EXTRAPOLATING that to "oh, he/she broke the laws therefore is inadmissible"
Quite different than if you have a conviction on your record. It is absurd to permanently ban someone from the US because they used an illicit drug in their past.
As mentioned above, we don't know what was asked. The traveler's story is here related second-hand anyway. Refusals at the border are not light work--any given major international airport will deny entry to
maybe a few dozen travelers daily, out of the many thousands that pass through, and a good chunk of those are students trying to sneak back in after having dropped out of school. This person almost certainly admitted to having been convicted at one time or another, and will likely suffer only the minimal inconvenience of having to wait a few weeks for a visa if the transgression was as minor as they say.
Lying to a federal officer in an official inquiry is a felony no matter what nationality you are, though if you're not American you'll probably just be locked out indefinitely. DO. NOT. LIE. TO. CBP.