How does it work for train crews? According to the INS Canadian transport workers cannot work in the US unless they have a green card, are native American, or are transporting freight to or from the US (i.e. not DOMESTIC US freight).
So..let's say we have a CN or a CP crew in the United States who are scheduled to take a train back to Canada...nothing complicated yet...but what if that train contains some freight that is destined for other points in the US and is only moving THROUGH Canada to final US destination? ..or if that train..destined for Canada has a stop in the US to drop off a boxcar or two??..Would the crew not be violating INS regulations?
Or are train crews changed at the border?
I think the regulation is that a Canadian crew can't move freight from point A to point B entirely within the US. So, a Canadian crew couldn't run a train from say Chicago to Detroit...but they could run a train from Chicago to Windsor, Ontario, even if the cars on the train ended up going from Windsor to Buffalo NY. US-Canada-US is fine...at least AFAIK.
Generally in a case like that, the Customs people would get a manifest of the freight (or passenger list) and "seal" the train cars going through Canada to ensure they were not loaded or unloaded in Canada.
Reminds me of an old movie from just before the US entered WW2. A German U-boat gets stranded in Hudson's Bay and the captain decides to lead the crew thru Canada to the US, which was then a neutral country. The captain - a nasty Nazi who kills several civilians during the trek - makes it to the Canadian side of the St. Laurence river and sneaks into a boxcar going across the bridge to the US.
Once across the bridge, he pops out of the boxcar and goes up to the US customs official (who is talking to his Canadian counterpart) and demands asylum in America, and starts talking about what a hero he'll be back in Germany and Heil Hitler and all that. The US official looks at the manifest and turns to the Canadian official and says "What's this?? He's not on the manifest. We can't accept this car with incomplete paperwork!" So the US guys throw him back in the boxcar, lock the door, and the switcher runs the car back across to the Canadian side.
I can recall some years before VIA that the CP had a passenger run from the Maritimes to Montreal, wth the middle third cutting right thru the heart of (largely uninhabited) Northern Maine.
IIRC the customs were taken care of at the border without waking the Pullman passengers, but it wasn't entirely a sealed train: it made a stop or two at Maine towns in the middle of the night (again IIRC).
If I am right about this, would this be a case where Canadian unions and employees would go all the way through? Or would U.S. labor concerns intervene? - a.s.
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