Rosita Smith spent months holed up in a tiny Montreal apartment, trying to take care of her two kids while pregnant with a third.
She was alone, and would be for a while, because her husband is a Vermonter.
“We’ve been crossing back and forth for close to six years, never had an issue,” the 31-year-old Canadian said.
“You never think that this could happen,” she said. “And I guess we took that for granted.”
Smith and her husband, Shane, joined scores of international couples separated by pandemic-induced border restrictions in 2020. Canada and the United States agreed last March to limit border crossings to essential travel only, an early measure to stop the spread of Covid-19. The decision left border communities reliant on Canadian tourists scrambling to cope and fretting about economic consequences.
Perhaps less discussed has been the plight of cross-border families like the Smiths. They were able to reunite in September, but many haven’t. On each side of the border, groups formed to lobby their governments to ease restrictions and allow families to be together. Canadian officials have twice added exemptions to their policies — which come with their own host of new problems — but the American government hasn’t budged.
“At this point, there’s no plan from the White House at all,” said Devon Weber, founder of Let Us Reunite, a national grassroots group lobbying for family exemptions to the border closure.
The campaign represents some 2,200 families split between the two countries, she said. Some group members haven’t seen their families for more than a year.
“We’re not asking for open borders; we’re asking to see our families,” Weber said. “It’s been a year. Canada figured out a way to do it and to relieve the suffering of their citizens and residents, and it’s time for the United States to step up and do the same.”
Last June, Canadian authorities allowed immediate family members of its citizens and permanent residents to enter the country, as long as they had no signs or symptoms of Covid and stayed for at least 15 days — 14 of which would be in quarantine.
Canada expanded its exemptions in October, which opened border crossing to extended family members — including foreigners who have been in an “exclusive dating relationship” with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident for at least a year.
Let Us Reunite wants the American government to make equivalent moves. And the group has gained support in Washington.
In a letter Jan. 29 to President Joe Biden, the House of Representatives Northern Border Caucus urged the White House to match Canada’s exemptions.
“The U.S. has not reciprocated this policy, despite the fact that Canadians are still able to fly into the U.S., resulting in restrictions that fall squarely on families in border communities and those who lack the means to travel by air, while doing little to protect public health,” the caucus members wrote.
Adopting exemptions continues the “tradition of coordination (with Canada) and lessens uncertainty for families approaching the border just seeking to reunite with loved ones,” wrote the legislators, who include Rep. Peter Welch, Vermont’s only congressman.
Trying to hold on
Uncertainty has grown familiar for Jennifer Bignell.
Before the pandemic, the 40-year-old Quebec City resident had visited relatives in the St. Albans area since she was a child. “That’s basically been my life,” she said.
Three years ago, she started dating Christopher Mead, whom she had met during a trip to Vermont. She would normally visit Mead two or three times a month, making the three-and-a-half–hour drive down to the St. Albans area.
“For the past three years, it’s felt more like home than this place does,” she said.
But Bignell hasn’t been able to go back since last February. Her partner can’t take advantage of the Canadian exemptions because he’d have to essentially take a month off from work — a quarantine in Canada, a quarantine upon his return,* and time for a visit in between.
“We’re a year and a few days in,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
The separation has been especially hard because she can no longer help take care of Mead’s two children, who she would look after when he had to work while they were on break from school, she said.
“I haven’t been able to be there to be a support system,” she said.
She could fly to the U.S. — air travel is allowed — but can’t afford the costs. In January, Canada mandated that all international flyers have to quarantine in selected hotels for up to three days while awaiting test results, at a cost of up to $1,500.
She believes the Canadian policies are riskier than her just driving across the border as usual, and place an undue burden on spouses trying to see their families.
‘So close to the end’
The hotel policy is the current focus of Faces of Advocacy, a Canadian counterpart to Let Us Reunite. Bignell is part of the group’s leadership team.
She was happy when the group fought for the exemptions and won, knowing they could help other families despite not solving her situation.
“You granted us exemptions, and now you’re basically taking them away,” she said of the Canadian government. “Who can afford to have to go into hotel quarantine for three days?”
She had been looking to move to Vermont, but the search halted when the pandemic struck.
The same thing happened to Smith, whose husband lived in Johnson.
“We were finally so close to the end of the green card process, and when the pandemic hit, they ended up canceling our final interview,” she said. “All we could think about was, ‘We could’ve been done with this, we could’ve been together and now they took that opportunity away from a lot of people.”
Pregnant, she stayed alone in Montreal for about three months before her husband was able to visit. Then the couple had a stroke of luck: Smith’s green card interview was rescheduled to last September.
As soon as she got the green light, she packed everything and left. She, her husband and their three kids have been living in Johnson since then.
‘I’d like to have some hope’
Béatrice Beuillé hopes to follow that same path. In September 2019, the 33-year-old Montrealer met Ethan Gilson, a Georgia resident, and they soon started dating.
In the early weeks of the border restrictions, the two met for a date along the boundary line between Franklin and Frelighsburg, Quebec. They sat in lawn chairs on either side of the border.
“I threw rocks; I was flirting pretty hard,” Gilson, 42, said. But border agents later told the couple they couldn’t meet like that again.
Beuillé flew to Gilson in June, and again in November. The cost of doing so means she can’t often, she said. Still, they were able to marry in December.
When the border first closed, “that was the end of my world,” she said. Her tune is more optimistic now.
“I’d like to have some hope,” she said. “And if they don’t (loosen the restrictions), at least we have the green card process and I can take the flight.”
As they wait to see what happens next, the couple has reflected on how valuable that easy drive across the border was.
“Now that we haven’t seen each other for so long, an hour and 10 minutes is like an unreal, short amount of time to see each other,” Gilson said. “It’s like in the fall, everyone thinks it’s freezing cold. In the spring, everyone thinks it’s warm. But it’s the same temperature.”
