 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
IronHorse
Member
| Joined: | Tue Jul 10th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 38 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |    |
|
Posted: Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 02:39 am |
|
Mesa, good point.
Thanks.
|
Timothy B.
Member
| Joined: | Sun Dec 25th, 2005 |
| Location: | Cananea, Sonora |
| Posts: | 224 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 03:46 am |
|
Good evening,
Just a reminder, the $ 10,000 limit is for entering Mexico as well as leaving the US. I don't know if they have a form for entering more than that amount, but I don't think I would want to do it anyway.
Timothy B.
|
mesa
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 25th, 2008 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 146 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 04:09 am |
|
| I was asked at the border when entering the US about $10,000. I said, "Do I look like someone with $10,000?" He laughed and said he was required to ask.
|
Stuart
Member
| Joined: | Wed Oct 26th, 2005 |
| Location: | Tempe, Arizona USA |
| Posts: | 487 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Tue Sep 22nd, 2009 10:33 pm |
|
The $10,000 limit is the number applied to all banking transactions. Banks must report to the Feds any transaction over $10,000. It was all part of our wonderful "War on Drugs" which we still haven't won and the Mexican people are now paying for so dearly. The purpose was to try and prevent money laundering by the drug cartels.
If you walk into a US car dealership with $10,000 in hand and put it down on a car, you will have to complete an IRS Form 8300 -- regardless if the $10,000 is in a single transaction or a series of transactions. Car dealerships, banks, pawn brokers, lawyers, real estate agents, etc. are all required to do this now. The exception to this is using a personal check. I can write a personal check for $10,000+ and no form is required. Why, you ask? It defaults back to the bank to notify the government that I spent over $10,000 in a single transaction.
So yes, of course the feds want to know if you're taking more than $10,000 out of the country. You would likely have to file the 8300 form, but probably wouldn't be stopped from doing it. Expect a knock on your door at some point from your friendly IRS agent if and when you return to the US.
I think when I cross the border this weekend, I'm going to tell them I have $9,999.99 just for the fun of it and see what happens!
|
IronHorse
Member
| Joined: | Tue Jul 10th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 38 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 12:59 am |
|
Stuart....careful...they may not have a sense of humor! (:
And thanks all, for responding to my question.
|
barato
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 04:06 pm |
|
i'm sure he was joking but your advice is well taken....there is a federal felony offense which can be loosely described as structuring financial transactions etc to stay below the $10K threshhold.....don't have citation or text of statute handy, but i suspect it may also apply to structuring importations/exportations of currency to avoid the 10K. if you tell em you have 9999.99, you're almost asking to be detained just for retaliation (Big Important Manly Ossifers of the DHS don't like being made fun of) and giving em a good basis to do so.
Not that they need a basis to do so. always remember that you have near zero 4th Amendment rights at the border and that they can inflict any delay and indignity on you up to a strip or body cavity search with NO basis for suspicion whatsoever. even the lesser standard of "reasonable suspicion" is not required for them to tear your entire vehicle apart and frisk your entire party...up to that point, the Supreme Court considers it all a "routine border search". strip or cavity search might require reas suspicion, but not even sure on that under current Supreme Court case law: "we suggest no view on what level of suspicion, if any, is required for nonroutine border searches such as strip, body-cavity, or involuntary x-ray searches".
always a better idea to keep mouth shut at border, and save one's wit for the Migra if they screw with you after you're already in the US
Last edited on Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 04:08 pm by barato
|
Timothy B.
Member
| Joined: | Sun Dec 25th, 2005 |
| Location: | Cananea, Sonora |
| Posts: | 224 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 04:51 pm |
|
Good morning,
Will go with barato.
I was talking to a border agent who I had known for a long time and asked him about the rights of a US citizen. He said basically they start at the fence, meaning where you left the "port of entry". He said the "port" is kind of a no mans land when it comes to rights and you really don't have any.
On another point, I asked him where his jurisdiction ended. His reply was that they could pursue a suspect across the US as long as they did not lose "line of sight" and that they trumped local law enforcement.
Timothy B.
|
Stuart
Member
| Joined: | Wed Oct 26th, 2005 |
| Location: | Tempe, Arizona USA |
| Posts: | 487 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 05:10 pm |
|
| I hear you and I *was* joking. No sense in poking a snake with a stick! I always "Yes sir" and "No sir" the ossifers just to give 'em a measure of due respect. I've never wanted to find out just how long that "long arm of the law" really is with it inserted in my backside!!
|
TC
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 05:32 pm |
|
barato, excellent advice (alas, I fear...)
And I've assumed, rightly or wrongly I don't know, that similar applies to inquisitions even well above the border.
I drive eastbound through the checkpoint on the 4-lane highway by White Sands a couple times a year. Normally my little visit there is as perfunctory as the one between Tubac and Amado on I-19: something like "U.S. citizen?" "Yep", move on (envision a gray-haired dead-obvious bourgeois gringo in a Town Car with Wisconsin plates, accompanied by clear remnants of a Southern Illinois twang in the voice).
This summer when I drove through, the young fellow in uniform wanted to play 20 questions. Including where had I been and where was I going. And even more probing about that, e.g. why was I where I'd come from and why was I going where I was going.
Although the steam coming out of my ears was probably beginning to show, somehow I managed to stifle the obvious answer: "Sorry, amigo -- absolutely none o' your business; I'm a citizen of this country, driving down the road from where I please to where I please."
For although I was, indeed, steaming, and it was, indeed, none of his business where I'd been or where I was going and why, I had visions of spending hours in the desert afternoon, evening, and night attempting to reassemble a completely disassembled land yacht.
Still makes me fume when I think of it. But I've almost convinced myself that I was simply exercising prudence, not wimpishly cowering in fear before a fella who had lost track of who he works for and why and was in need of some reasonably polite reminding.
|
IronHorse
Member
| Joined: | Tue Jul 10th, 2007 |
| Location: | California USA |
| Posts: | 38 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 05:57 pm |
|
TC
There is definitely nothing wimpy about being prudent!
Good thinking.
|
TC
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 06:06 pm |
|
IronHorse wrote: TC
There is definitely nothing wimpy about being prudent!
Good thinking.
LOL! Thanks for the encouragement -- I'll keep telling myself that I was prudent! 
|
Timothy B.
Member
| Joined: | Sun Dec 25th, 2005 |
| Location: | Cananea, Sonora |
| Posts: | 224 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 06:31 pm |
|
TC
This is off the thread but you mentioned Southern Ill. twang. Did you live there at one time?
I originate from Champaign and did a short stint at SIU. Maybe, being from Green Valley, you may know a family friend that was also from back there, Robt. Schultz.
Take care, and yes it was prudence.
Timothy B.
|
barato
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 06:51 pm |
|
TC, funny you should mention that checkpoint as i go through there myself regularly. last time, the 17 1/2 yr old lookin agentcito ran me through all kinds of similar nonsense, apparently because he didn't see my license plate on the carrier rack and assumed i didn't have one (load vehicles commonly have discrepancies in registration, insurance, etc). he finally "asked" if i'd "mind" if they dogged the vehicle; didn't feel very ornery that night or might have said i did mind. so they ran dog....dog alerted, to a styrofoam take-out container containing leftover Indan food! i encouraged em to open it and look but they apparently realized how ridiculous they looked and declined. (this jibes with another dogging experience i had, where dog was all over my submarine sandwich....so much for those infallibly accurate dogs). wonder if you ran into the same little agent i did.
from a legal standpoint, no, it's not at all the same as the border or the "functional equivalent" thereof. these checkpoints are nominally for immigration only (Supreme Court reiterated a few years back that generalized crime-interdiction or drug-interdiction checkpoints are illegal) and if they are satisfied that you're a USC and/or in the US legally and not carrying undoc'd people in the trunk, they are supposed to let you go on your way. only if they develop "reasonable suspicion" that you might be carrying a load of dope before they conclude the immigration inquiry are they allowed to continue to detain you. IMHO, what you ran into definitely pushed or exceeded those limits, unless maybe the Town Car was heavily loaded and riding low (large car, holds lots of people in trunk, sometimes popular with coyotes or at least BP thinks so).
that said, don't ever feel you're being wimpy for avoiding possible confrontation and/or delay. OTOH, you shouldn't feel afraid to speak up....this is not a situ like the border, where they hold all the cards and no one will Q their actions, this is an interference with a USC's constitutional right to travel freely between states on a U.S. highway, and more importantly the BP realizes pissing off too many people could adversely affect their public relations and even potentially funding. your response would have been appropriate and well within your rights. remember also, there's the 3d option of keeping quiet at the time and and noting agent's name and descrip, and later complaining in writing to their mgmt about his excesses. this sort of rights divestiture creeps up on people.....have you seen the row of detectors for something that they now have set up at the SOUTHbound lanes adjacent to all the highway checkpoints?
after hearing your story, i may be a bit less cooperative next time i go through that one. also may not bother to take my dog's leash, so he can have the enjoyable opportunity of making friends with the BP's dog (i'm sure the BP dog would enjoy it too!). i've been living in the El Paso area for 20+ yrs now, and this crap gets a little old....the only direction i can go fishing and NOT get it, is south....and even that now seems to be likely to get me searched. some of my colleagues speak in terms of the "Deconstitutionalized Zone". Carlos Santana said it right.....and everybody sang along with that one when he played it here in EP!
OK, off-topic rant over. sorry.
|
TC
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 07:37 pm |
|
Timothy B. wrote: TC
This is off the thread but you mentioned Southern Ill. twang. Did you live there at one time?
I originate from Champaign and did a short stint at SIU. Maybe, being from Green Valley, you may know a family friend that was also from back there, Robt. Schultz.
Take care, and yes it was prudence.
Timothy B.
Timothy, I was born and raised in the country near Alton, spent my first 17 years in that area (and didn't know I had a twang until I left!). I think I've been to Carbondale only once, and I don't recognize the name Robert Schultz. I did do quite a sentence at U of I, though.
Yes, agreed that I was prudent. Thing is, it was prudence out of fear of consequences, consequences of the sort that shouldn't even be a thought, much less a fear. That's the maddening bit, about both the inquisition questioning in the first place, and my wimpy (for it was that) response to it.
|
TC
Member
|
Posted: Wed Sep 23rd, 2009 08:38 pm |
|
barato, I think your post is very much on topic re Border Patrol behavior.
I remind myself that these guys have unpleasant jobs, that they can be in danger at any moment, and that the unpleasantness and danger seem to be increasing, thus they can't be expected to be happy campers. But whether they're right on the border or at an in-the-country checkpoint, surely maintaining a degree of professionalism would help to make the job less unpleasant.
And, I must say, in my experience most do seem to do a good job at remaining professional. I've never had rude treatment or stupid questions at the checkpoint on I-19, and I can only remember one (minor) annoying incident coming in at the border: an agent at DeConcini bent over and without warning started banging a sort of metal rod on the bottom of the gas tank, not lightly. (Fair enough to look for secret compartments, but ask, or at least tell, first.)
|
mesa
Member
| Joined: | Tue Nov 25th, 2008 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 146 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Thu Sep 24th, 2009 12:11 am |
|
It may be true that they have an unpleasant job but remember that they weren't drafted. They wanted that job, they applied for and they underwent some training for it. If they felt that it offended their sense of right, they could quit. They aren't in the military so if they are there it is because they would rather be doing that than anything else.
|
barato
Member
|
Posted: Thu Sep 24th, 2009 12:18 am |
|
Mesa, good points. i'd add that many of them are recruited from muni police departments by the lure of Big Federal Pay, and fact that while the line agents patrolling middle of nowhere might face some danger, it's a little hard to argue that they are in danger at a permanent checkpoint on a major highway with 5 or more of their colleagues in house at all times.
Robert Heinlein pointed out that in any society where the term "civil servant" becomes the semantic equivalent of "civil master", it may be time to move on. food for thought.
|
UsryTregre
Member
|
Posted: Thu Sep 24th, 2009 01:50 pm |
|
Warning: BP support ahead!
Okay, guys, I have to weigh in on the side of the Border Patrol. If you think these checkpoints get old for you, how do you think the folks at the BP station feel? They are constantly pounded with "I come through here every day and you guys want to pull me over for a check . . . yada, yada".
Fact: DHS went on a huge hiring binge, with particular focus on grabbing Law Enforcement experience and bringing in youngsters to "grow their own". I can tell you that military police are finding good jobs after their service. So, give the 'kid' a chance.
Fact: The 'bad guys' target the 'every day' kind of people, and the people in 'land yachts', just because those are not the norm. "C'mon, just one time, carry this [gun|person], and you make a $1000." Ergo -- 20 Questions. They don't screw with you for the fun of it, they target you because you are a target.
A couple of years back, the Army Intel Center NCO of the year, and several 'hotshot' others, were nailed for coyote'ing drugs and illegals through Fort Huachuca. No one is above suspicion.
While I do not ever think it is a wise idea to mess with any official . . . y'should've seen 'em freak when one of the checks asked "Do you have any weapons or ammunition?", and we said "Yes, 4 or 5 guns and about 1200 rounds . . ." My husband and I shoot competition skeet . . . . well, he does, I just shoot AT the targets . . . But we treated the bug-eyed youngster gently as he handled his first 'event'. (The old guys in the background were smirking.)
So please, give the BP a break. While I do not argue that there are some with attitude, most are there to do a job with depths we know nothing about. Unless you have access to a classified network . . . . .
PS - we live 4.5 miles north of the border, and run through checkpoints routinely. The Douglas sector of AZ had 14,000 illegals PER MONTH before the crackdown -- source John McCain when he argued to secure the borders, pre-election.
Last edited on Thu Sep 24th, 2009 01:53 pm by UsryTregre
|
TC
Member
|
Posted: Thu Sep 24th, 2009 02:30 pm |
|
UsryTregre, agreed on most points. But not the "Where've you been?" "Where're you going?" 20-questions schtick when I'm obviously a citizen, driving on my country's public roads well beyond the border. Wanna look in the trunk? Under the circumstances of all the smuggling of this and that, sure. Bring out the dogs, too, if you like. But it's not the business of any government agent where I've been or where I'm going or why.
And I did give the kid a break. I was polite when he was being way too nosy. Even when he asked why I was going to Wisconsin, I neither informed him of the obvious -- that it was none of his business -- nor did I embarrass him by observing that if he were as observant as he was curious, he wouldn't be asking dumb, irrelevant questions. "Gee, what's your guess as to why someone with a car tagged Wisconsin might be going to Wisconsin?" Tip of tongue, but nope. I answered straightforwardly in a civil manner.
|
GringoinSonora
Member
| Joined: | Thu Feb 26th, 2009 |
| Location: | Hermosillo, Mexico |
| Posts: | 23 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Thu Sep 24th, 2009 06:37 pm |
|
I have crossed back and forth across the Nogales/Mariposa crossing many times. I am pretty sure I have seen a sign that says the border is only open, from 6am until 10pm. I could be wrong about those hours, but there is such a sign and it implies that the border is closed in the wee hours.
I would never drive that road at night anyway, so I am not sure why I am asking this question.
So, is the border open, at Nogales/Mariposa 24/7 ?
Last edited on Thu Sep 24th, 2009 06:38 pm by GringoinSonora
|
Current time is 11:45 am | Page:   1 2 3 4   |
|
|
|
|
