Moving to Canada: Border Crossing as an American

[annegirl]

hello everyone, I am going to be a grad student at a canadian university this september and I was wondering if anyone who has crossed the border would mind telling me how detailed my list of personal and household goods should be? 

 

Am I to list out every single spoon, book, and t-shirt with a description and estimated value or can I group things a little into "this many t-shirts" estimated value? The B4 form looked really short to me so I'm confused. 

 

I'm not bringing any food, wine or plants and I know to list the serial numbers on my electronics. 

 

Thank you for any suggestions!

[TakeruK]

I'd assume that because of NAFTA, this is very similar to the list I had to make going from Canada to the US. The instructions I got said that it's okay to say "30 knives, 30 forks, 30 spoons", instead of listing each spoon individually. However, we should not say "90 eating utensils" or "50 clothing articles". 

 

We shipped our stuff in a U-Haul box that customs did not open at all. I think the list of items is mostly a formality -- due to NAFTA, we do not have to pay duties on personal items that we move with us from Canada to US or vice versa. But they probably want a record of everything and there are probably random spot checks where they would open up the "lucky" container and cross check items with the packed list.

 

In the end, I would advise to take the time to count # of shirts etc. and do the list since getting a fine is no fun. Also, it was kind of interesting / educational to truly list out every item we owned (it also helped us realise that we had a ton of stuff that we didn't need to move with us). But, I would not take the effort to write detailed descriptions -- be as vague as possible so that you can lump things into the same category (e.g. no need to distinguish blue t-shirts vs. green t-shirts, or salad forks vs. dinner forks). Also, just wildly guess at the dollar value. For example, I just counted up all my books, assigned them all a value of $5, did a multiplication and wrote down the number, instead of adding up all of the price tags on the barcodes etc. Same with shirts etc. Again, we aren't paying duties so the dollar value isn't super important. We kept track of what went into each box (helpful for unpacking too) and when we were all done, I consolidated all the individual lists into a giant 13 page document for the border agents. Labelling each box was something we would have done anyways, so the only "extra" time was making the master list, which I estimated to take about 2-3 hours.

[annegirl]

Thanks for sharing your experience! Thankfully I'm only taking about 8 boxes and a few random things so I hope it won't take too long. Since I can't find a detailed explanation of what constitutes household goods and personal goods I'm assumed one bottle of liquid soap would be okay to bring? The same with my cosmetics? 

[TakeruK]

Yes, liquid soap, cosmetics, etc. are all okay to bring (at least, no one at the border contacted us about it and we clearly listed it on our manifest). We ended up with a box of 100s of liquid detergent samples (don't ask how!) and we even brought that along with us without problems! I remember reading that the definition of household/personal goods is things that were used by you and will be used by you, in your home. So not things that you plan to bring to the US to resell to others. I also remember reading that you are supposed to have owned the item for at least 1 year prior to moving, but again, that is something pretty difficult to check. I get the sense that the NAFTA import/export laws are to ensure that people like us are able to move our belongings without paying duties while preventing people from illegally importing mass amounts of goods to sell in the other country. So, maybe they might be suspicious if you had something like 100 iPods listed on your manifest....

[random17]

Both our "Goods Accompanying" and "Goods to Follow" list were very unspecific (only about 1.5 pages in total for everything the two of us own) and we had no problems whatsoever. We listed furniture or big things individually and grouped everything else by type, so our list included entries like "1 desk and contents of desk drawers, including books and decorations", 

"16 boxes of kitchen things (including cookware/bakeware, appliances, and utensils", "1 box of tools", "2 boxes of household linens", or "5 suitcases of clothes".  We included serial numbers of electronics, but didn't include descriptions of any jewelry.  We also widely guessed at values, because it really doesn't matter, as TakeruK mentioned. 

 

In terms of what counts as household and personal goods, you should definitely be fine with soap and cosmetics. We brought spices, partial things of shampoo, and things like that.  As already mentioned, you're supposed to have owned/used everything for at least a year, but we moved brand-new things that were still in their packaging and no one ever noticed. (We got married 6 days before we moved to Canada, so didn't unpack most of our wedding presents until after we got here. There's technically an exception for wedding gifts, but we were never asked why we had unopened appliances, etc.) 

 

In general, no one seemed to care at all what we had listed--our lists were never checked against what we had in our car or our storage cube and the customs agent didn't do more than briefly glance at our list before stamping it.  On the other hand, it may all depend on the whims of whatever customs agent you get when you cross.

[NothingButTheRain]

I never encountered anywhere close to that level of scrutiny when crossing the border in either direction.  I would expect to be pulled into secondary for a search, and as long as you can explain what's in each bag/box/etc, I wouldn't worry too much about it (though labeling boxes may help you out).

[TakeruK]

I never encountered anywhere close to that level of scrutiny when crossing the border in either direction.  I would expect to be pulled into secondary for a search, and as long as you can explain what's in each bag/box/etc, I wouldn't worry too much about it (though labeling boxes may help you out).

 

I guess I should clarify that our stuff did not cross the border the same time as we did -- we flew to our destination while the stuff was shipped on a truck by a shipping company. So, I felt that we had to be more explicit in the list because I would not be able to be physically present to answer any questions or fill out additional pages of materials etc. -- I figured that it was worth the few hours to put together the giant list since the paperwork said that if someone at the border didn't like my list, they would either send it back or divert it to a customs bonded warehouse near my final destination (and pay additional charges). I don't know if the agent that inspected the shipping truck even looked at list, but the shipping company also makes sure that we have the right paperwork since they don't want to have to be stuck at the border with our stuff that they can't take across!