Entered Canada without a passport

A traveller who entered the United States from Canada without a passport was let over the American border - after presenting officials with a scanned document on his iPad. Martin Reisch had driven from his home in Montreal before realising half an hour from the border he did not have his passport. Mr Reisch, 33, instead told an official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection he was heading to American to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend`s children, before presenting a scanned passport and driver`s licence on the Apple device. But rather than demand he drive two hours home to fetch the hard copies of his documents, border officials spent several minutes studying the photos on his iPad before allowing him over the border last week. Mr Reisch said: `I thought I`d at least give it a try. He took the iPad into the little border hut. `He kind of gave me a stare, like neither impressed nor amused. `He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas. `I think a good part of it had to do with the fact that it was the holidays and I seem like a nice-enough person.` U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it will accept documentation such as a passport, an enhanced driver`s licence or a Nexus pass from Canadian citizens entering at land crossings. The list doesn`t mention facsimiles, such as scans and photocopies. A spokeswoman for the department did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday on whether scanned passports are also commonly accepted at U.S. points of entry. Professor Heather Nicol, a border-security expert from Trent University, said Mr. Reisch`s experience is likely one of many unspoken exceptions carried out at U.S. border crossings. `There is some wiggle room,” said Prof. Nicol, a political geographer at the Peterborough, Ont., university. `What it suggests is that this whole standardization process is a little bit of a shell game because we`re told it`s not about individuals, it`s about data sets. But sometimes the experience is very individual.`

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