We
landed yesterday at the Calais, Maine border with my mother-in-law and her partner. In the car I handed over my passport and ESTA form (with their Canadian passports) to be looked at by the booth agent and he looked through my passport for quite a while. I was getting nervous when he leaned over and asked, "You lived in Japan?" I said yes, and he seemed really excited all of sudden, he asked me about my time there and said in a chipper voice that I need to go inside the building. I was smiling because he was kind of skipping to the door to hand the other agent my docs. My husband and I went into the building while my MIL waited outside.
Only one of the agents knew how to do the immigration forms apparently and he was busy so we waited about 20 mins. During that time we saw three sets of people get chewed out for breaking the rules. My MIL said she saw two women crying and then another guy in a different group cursing angrily as they went back to their cars!! When the one agent who could help us got to us, some other agents were SHOUTING at a couple of guys in the other room. Scary but surreal as the border agent from earlier was joking with us about Japan and if we heard the "fireworks" going on (i.e., all the crying/cursing that we were witnessing!).
;D
We were told that the new immigration rules means that we have to fill out a new form not the ETSA (which was for landing by planes only??) but they seemed happy we had it because it gave them the info they needed. I guess he must have filled the form out himself on the pc because he stapled it to my passport and told me to return the form when we came back later that day!
We left, and assured my MIL that the wait wasn't because we were one of the ones being scolded, and went shopping for a couple hours. We ate lunch at a restaurant called Yancy's and it was deeelicious.
On the way back, when we had to give our passports in the car again, I put in my COPR so she would know I was landing and she was pretty great, showing where we should go. MIL and hubby had to go into the building with me to pay duties on the stuff we bought and I waited for someone who knew how to do "landing procedures". We waited for maybe 30/40 mins and I was getting nervous. The place looked empty with only a woman who knew how to deal with tax/duties section there.
Then all of a sudden 4 people came back and we were seen to (they must have all been on lunch?) After that, it was pretty anti-climatic, as has been stated before. I signed stuff, showed my marriage cert (which he barely even looked at) and wrote my address down (he didn't ask for proof of address) and returned the US border form. And he signed stuff and gave me a paper indicating how to get my SIN and stuff. He said it will take a long time to get the PR card (many months) but I'm sure it won't be that long. The only thing that really makes me smile thinking about it now is the amount of times he said "Congratulations!" Like, four or five times!
