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What Have We Done?

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Clarissa

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To enter Canada as a Canadian citizen, you need to download an app, upload paperwork into it, answer five million questions, receive six million stern warnings, and receive a QR code. None of which guarantees entry into the country of your citizenship.

Apparently, you no longer qualify as a citizen if you don’t have a smartphone where the app and the documents should be uploaded.

I still remember when citizenship didn’t require additional purchases, technology, and documentation. Citizenship simply was. Like biological sex. It didn’t need to be questioned and re-negotiated. But now a passport is worth nothing without vaccine passports, fresh COVID tests, quarantine plans, doctor notes, and QR codes. We have sacrificed something huge for. . . what, exactly? What has been gained? How was citizenship taken away from us just like that? The younger people won’t even remember how it used to be.

What have we done?

3 responses to “What Have We Done?”

  1. AcademicLurker Avatar
    AcademicLurker

    Apparently, you no longer qualify as a citizen if you don’t have a smartphone

    I was in London for a conference last week and my phone died. For a while I was wondering if I would get back into the United States because the entire process of getting proof of a negative covid test was based on the assumption that they could send a QR code to your phone. I had to explain over and over again that I would need proof in some other form.

    On the other hand, going in the other direction to the UK was a breeze, since they’ve dropped their restrictions and gone back to normal.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “the other direction to the UK was a breeze, since they’ve dropped their restrictions and gone back to normal”

      More and more European countries are dropping restrictions with just a few holdouts (usual suspects Germany, Spain, Italy…. I expect the last two to drop them soon since tourism is so important there).

      Liked by 1 person

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Also, vaccine passports look different in the US and Canada. In Canada, they are a serious, serious, highly digitalized business. And the one I got in the US is a bit of paper where the countryside clerk wrote something by hand.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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