Nexus

Heidi and I took a road trip on Saturday (mind you in an amazing rental.. but that is another story) and we are now the holders of authorised Nexus cards from the combined US Customs and Immigration Service and Canadian Border Patrol. For the low low price of $50 for 5 years (so really $10 a year) we get the fun of being able to quickly and easily go across the border between Canada and the USA.

Now we don’t often go up to Canada so why would we bother spending the $$$ to get quick access to the Northern part of the Commonwealth… ay? Well because for $50 you get Global Entry and also TSA Pre Check. Both of those things are the real reason to buy Nexus. Because Precheck is $85 and Global Entry is $100 so for half the price you get all three. WINNING!

We were so happy to be doing Nexus and saving money, but what they don’t explain to you is that any time you need to make an update (address, jobs, updates to your passports etc) you need to go back to a Nexus enrollment center to do that. *sigh*. They won’t allow it to be just done online, you need to go back to the physical location. That would be ok if we lived closer, or if Boeing Field and more than 1 pair of officers (Nexus center staff work in pairs, 1 american & 1 Canadian.. ay). So we could wait all day and hope that we could get it done at Boeing Field, but there’s no guarantee for that. Instead we will need to drive up north to Blaine to get the paperwork done there, because they always have staff dedicated to changes.

But it is a small price to pay for being able to clear security quickly and easily, the way it used to be. If only you didn’t need to pay for this privilege, then it would be ok. But that is the world we live in today. Guess we could always go up to Vancouver for the day right?

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