CANADA: So Sorry

In Hoboken, N.J. one day last month, honey-haired Ruth Comfort, a University of Toronto student, was all set to walk down the gangplank of the Volendam and take the train home. Then a U.S. immigration officer began to question her.

Hadn’t she made a pro-Communist speech on the ship? “No, this must all be a mistake.” Had she ever read Karl Marx? “No, never.” Had she read Lenin? “No, no.” There were more questions, including one about how she had voted in the last election. Then she was whisked off to Ellis Island. Twenty-four hours later, after Canadian Ambassador Hume Wrong had protested to the U.S. State Department, she was released.

Last week the State Department made an abject apology: “Miss Comfort was detained as the result of a most regrettable and unfortunate mistake. There is no information in the files of the immigration service which would render her inadmissible should she apply for entry into the United States in the future.”

Despite the relative freedom of border crossings,* and even allowing a tolerance for the imponderables of red tape, most Canadians felt such incidents occurred all too frequently. Said the Ottawa Citizen: “United States immigration authorities have been applying a ‘thought control’ policy that in recent months has caused many Canadians inconvenience and humiliation.”

*In the fiscal year of 1948, 24,788 Canadians got U.S. immigrant visas, 104,928 got 30-day visas.