By Joel Warner, Men's Journal
The border guard’s question surprised Jessica Goldstein: “Have you ever used drugs?”
It
was 2013, and Goldstein, a 30-year-old Canadian from the Vancouver
area, was on her way to a Dave Matthews concert in Washington State,
passing through the Peace Arch border crossing between the United States
and Canada. She’d done this countless times before and had never been
asked about her narcotics history. The inquiry seemed especially odd
considering the setting: With its picnic tables and grassy fields, the
Peace Arch port of entry looks more like a park than a high-security
border crossing.
[post_ads]So she told the truth: She used marijuana about
once a month. She was, after all, traveling into Washington, whose
voters had legalized marijuana the year before. Her boyfriend at the
time had recently been asked the same question at the border, and when
he’d admitted to smoking pot, agents had thanked him for being honest
and let him through. But the guards had a different reaction to
Goldstein’s response. They detained and interrogated her for six hours,
then told her she’d been deemed inadmissible to the United States, a
status that would likely stay with her for the rest of her life. “I was
being treated like a criminal when I didn’t do anything wrong and was
just being honest,” she says.
It wasn’t a mistake. According to a statement from Customs
and Border Protection spokesman Jaime Ruiz, “A violation, conspiracy to
violate, or simply an attempt to violate any U.S. state, federal, or any
foreign government controlled substance law renders a foreign national
inadmissible to the United States.” That means, as per immigration law,
if a foreigner tells border agents that he or she has consumed or plans
to consume marijuana, even in jurisdictions where it’s legal, the
result could be banishment from the country for life.
While the law has
been on the books for years, the little-known rule has become a growing
problem as states like Washington, Oregon, and Colorado have launched
recreational marijuana markets and folks become less reluctant to admit
to using cannabis. Matters will surely become even thornier over the
next year, as two more border states, California and Maine, launch
recreational cannabis programs and, more pressingly, Canada moves toward legalizing marijuana nationwide.
That
means there could soon be a lot more Canadians and other foreigners who
find themselves barred from the United States for admitting to
something they figure is perfectly legit. And once that happens, the
only way for them back in is by applying for an inadmissibility waiver
from the U.S. government. To do that, Goldstein and many of her
countrymen are turning to one individual in particular: Len Saunders, a
small-town immigration lawyer in Blaine, Washington, who’s become the
go-to guy for Canadians who unexpectedly find themselves turned into
international pot pariahs.
“For
me, it’s definitely a booming business,” says Saunders. The
Canadian-born attorney, who attended Pepperdine School of Law in
California and has dual citizenship, had no intention of becoming an
expert in marijuana and immigration law. He simply saw an opportunity to
set up a law firm specializing in immigration issues
in Blaine, the nearest border town to the Peace Arch port of entry, the
third busiest crossing between Canada and the United States, and the
busiest on the West Coast.
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But business started to change
after Washington began opening recreational marijuana shops in 2014.
Blaine has always catered to Canadian consumers, since gas and groceries
are cheaper in the States. Now it began drawing cannabis shoppers from
north of the border, too. “I wouldn’t be able to survive here if I
didn’t have international travelers,” says Jacob Lamont, owner of Evergreen Cannabis,
a marijuana shop in Blaine. During the spring, summer, and fall, Lamont
figures 70 percent of his business comes from folks coming through the
Peace Arch crossing, which he can see from his parking lot.
But
with those marijuana shoppers came border problems. Saunders began
receiving more and more phone calls from Canadians who’d told border
guards they’d tried marijuana or were planning to in Washington and had
been deemed inadmissible. “It used to be one or two cases like that a
year,” he says. “Now I am seeing one or two cases a week.”
Those
cases involve Saunders’ clients completing an extensive waiver
application, undergoing a criminal-background check, presenting proof of
employment, providing two character reference letters, and penning a
letter of remorse. Then there’s the $585 filing charge, plus Saunders’
legal fees. The resulting waivers are only good for one to five years;
Saunders says first-time applicants deemed inadmissible for
marijuana-related activities always begin with a one-year waiver. That
means after his clients receive their first waiver following the four-
to six-month application processing time, they need to immediately start
the process over again — and then again and again for the rest of their
lives.
“I tell my clients, this is a lifetime relationship with me,”
says Saunders. Not everyone can handle that process. Saunders has seen
careers implode and relationships collapse over someone being deemed
inadmissible to the country for marijuana and not being able to jump
through all the endless hoops to get back in.
Such cases aren’t
the only way clashes between marijuana reforms and immigration law are
wreaking havoc on people’s lives, say immigration lawyers. Cannabis
businesses can’t attract foreign financiers who’d need immigrant
investor visas or sponsor employment-based visas for qualified
candidates from other countries because they deal in a federally
unlawful substance. U.S. citizens in the marijuana industry can’t
sponsor visas for foreign-born spouses, since their partners would be
considered complicit in illicit drug activity. And immigrants working in
dispensaries are being denied green cards because of their jobs.
[post_ads]Cannabis-based immigration crackdowns are nothing new. According to a 2015 Human Rights Watch report,
between 2007 and 2012, more than 50,000 non-citizens were deported
after being convicted of selling or possessing marijuana. But experts
say the situation could be exacerbated by the Trump administration’s
hard-line stance on cannabis, including Homeland Security chief John
Kelly’s recent statements
that marijuana is a “potentially dangerous gateway drug” that will be
used as a basis for “targeted operations against illegal aliens.”
“Statements
by the administration make us concerned that there will be really
severe immigration consequences for people who use marijuana, even in
jurisdictions where it’s legal,” says Human Rights Watch senior
researcher Grace Meng. “We are all trying to track the impact of what
these new policies are, but we might not know for a year or more.”
ght already be having an
impact on immigrants. A woman in Colorado says she and her family moved
to the state about a year ago so she could use medical marijuana for a
serious heart condition. Recently, her husband, a foreign national who’s
had his green card for 15 years, was planning on applying for
citizenship. But then a friend working for the federal government warned
him that the naturalization process had just been changed to scrutinize
applicants’ experience with cannabis. “He said if my husband’s records
showed any mention of relocating for [marijuana] access for me, that
would be enough for him to be deported, as it shows him being supportive
of usage,” says the woman, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her
family.
In Blaine, Saunders says he’s starting to see indications
of toughening policies, too. Last month, on 4/20 of all days, he
received his first ever denial of a waiver for a marijuana-related
inadmissibility decision. And while immigration officials can send
waiver applicants to an authorized physician to determine if they’re a
health risk, they had only decided to do so once over the past year for
all of his marijuana-related clients. That changed last month: Three of
his clients were told they’d need a medical exam to determine whether
their cannabis use was a health threat.
No one knows how the
situation will change if Canada ends marijuana prohibition in 2018. “If
they legalize, I don’t think they can find someone inadmissible who’s
using marijuana under a federal government where it’s legal,” says Scott
Railton, a Bellingham, Washington-based immigration lawyer
who’s an expert in marijuana-related immigration issues. “But my guess
is immigration agencies will be slow to give clear guidelines on that,
and I still think there will be some arbitrary exercise of authority.”
The
new law also wouldn’t help Canadians who let slip to border guards
they’re heading to Washington to do their cannabis shopping, says
Saunders. “I am sure marijuana is going to cost less here,” he says.
“Because of taxes in Canada, everything is more expensive.” Nor is
nationwide legalization — in Canada or eventually in the United States —
likely to help foreigners who’ve already been deemed inadmissible for
past cannabis incidents. “Officials I’ve talked to say these people
would still be inadmissible because at the time they admitted to smoking
marijuana, it was still a controlled substance,” says Saunders.
The
best option for foreigners, says Saunders, is to avoid admitting to
marijuana use at the border in the first place. “I can’t tell people to
lie to a border agent,” says Saunders. “But I can tell people they are
under no obligation to answer that question.” If someone refuses to
answer questions about marijuana, the only thing agents can do is deny
entry to the country on that given day.
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But even with warnings
like this, Saunders figures more and more Canadians are going to assume
it’s okay to be open about marijuana at the border, which means he’s
going to be getting more and more calls about it. “I want a booming
green card business, I want a booming business of individuals who want
to become nationalized citizens and vote in federal elections,” he says.
“I want my workers permits to boom, so more foreigners can come here
and work, like I did.”
But marijuana-related work? That’s the last
part of his business he wants to see boom. “Soon you will be able to
stand on one side of the border and have it legal and stand on the other
side of the border and have it legal, but on this thin line in the
middle it’s not,” he says. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
