Nexus

Nexus cards help to speed up the process of travel, particularly air travel.

For a Canadian, the Nexus card provides pre-clearance for customs and can act as a proxy for a passport although we still carry passports with us when we travel.

To keep the Nexus card in good standing, a Nexus member is required to inform of any changes to status such as a change of address or a change of employment. Failure to inform Nexus of a change to status may result in the loss of the Nexus membership.

My address and employment status has changed. And it was remarkably difficult to update my Nexus records. I now have to make a special trip to the enrolment centre to inform them of my change of employment status as there is no mechanism on their new website to enter this change online.

Prior to October of 2017, Nexus members would use the Global Online Enrolment System (GOES) to update their information.

No longer.

I had no idea that GOES had closed down.

There is now a Trusted Traveller Program in its place. I had to create a new account and migrate my data from the old GOES website.

Whoever designed the Trusted Traveller Program website accomplished their mission of making it singularly user-unfriendly. No migration wizard to be found. Rather, a maze of disconnected and rather unhelpful content seemingly engineered to make the whole process as difficult as possible.

I was able to migrate my GOES account over to the TTP account but I could only update two pieces of information: driver’s license and address.

Nowhere to be seen was a place to update employment status.

We head out tomorrow morning to queue up at the enrolment centre to let them know that I have now retired. Technically my official retirement date is October 1st as I had a number of vacation days that I was able to use over the past two months.

We don’t want to lose our Trusted Traveller status particularly as we will be spending our winters south in the United States. Crossing a land border with an RV does not allow you to use the Nexus lines. Those lines are for cars only. Presenting a Nexus card does help even at the regular customs lanes. A customs officer will see all of the relevant data which helps the officer determine the risk level of the traveller in question.

Which, for Lorraine and myself, should continue to be low as members of the Trusted Travellers Program.