May 14, 2007 2:56PM 

# As If Canada Were a Separate Country 

By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) 

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[Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/harper.html) adequately [documents](https://www.cato.org/2007/05/14/whti-does-more-harm-than-good) (1) how the State Department is bungling my wife’s application for a new passport, which one now needs to fly to Montreal (for some reason), and (2) my appeal to the opposite sex.

I would add only that, while [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/boaz.html) is correct that a fence between the U.S. and Mexico is not exactly Berlin Wall-esque (“[The Berlin Wall was designed to keep citizens *in*](https://www.cato.org/2007/05/13/all-walls-are-not-created-equal/)”), this bone-headed rule that one cannot fly to Canada without a passport might be: it actually *does* make it more difficult for American citizens to leave.

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) 

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