I haven't seen much of this story resonating around the Canadian or American blogosphere this weekend, so I'm bringing it up here after writing about it at the Canadian Prog Blog site to alert folks down here because I find the implications rather disturbing. It appears after all these years, the US military (and I would presume by extension the current US government) has all of a sudden decided its time to crackdown and arrest all those disloyal folks who refused to fight in the Vietnam War and who fled to Canada to avoid doing so - most of them now naturalized Canadian citizens.
Here's an example of said crackdown:
Canadian Held For Deserting Marines in 1968:
A B.C. man spent the weekend detained at a military base in California after being arrested for deserting the U.S. Marine Corps four decades ago during the Vietnam War. Allen Abney, who was born in the United States but became a Canadian citizen in 1977, was arrested at a border crossing on Thursday while trying to enter Idaho from southeastern British Columbia. He and his wife were on their way for a holiday in Reno, Nev., when U.S. officials accused him of desertion and took him into custody. In 1968, Abney was a 19-year-old marine when he fled to Canada because he didn't want to fight in Vietnam.
Isolated incident? Apparently not lately:
He is the third marine from the Vietnam era to be arrested this month, and Toronto lawyer Jeffrey House believes the marines are trying to make examples of deserters to discourage those who might think of avoiding the Iraq war.
There are a lot of former US soldiers up here as well as those who came north to avoid the draft that are now Canadian citizens. They have been left alone for years... but now all of a sudden the morass known as Iraq appears to have made all these people a potential target for arrest. Travelling to the US since 9/11 and their various security measures has already dampened some Canadians from travelling south of the border, and this certainly wont help.
As an aside, one of the commenters at Prog Blog stated that other media reports indicated that Mr. Abney had made frequent trips to the US, and this is the first such incident of him being harrassed.
That commenter also goes on to state that in his opinion, if the Marines/US Government were serious about catching deserters, they would have done so long ago. I would suspect as stated earlier this is just a reaction to Iraq and to try to show soldiers they will crack the whip, and that these folks are being made an example of.
As far as I am concerned, Canada should make sure it fully represents their citizens who find themselves facing this situation, and it should ask the US if they now intend to prosecute every "deserter" and draft dodger that fled north in the 1960's and 1970's. If they do, Canada should then issue a special "travel advisory" for the US to our citizens who face that potential situation.
Hopefully... the thus issued advisory (along with this apparent new crackdown) will run out in January, 2009 after this current Bush regime finally leaves office.