Two caveats regarding travel outside of one's own country with instruments.
The first one is gleaned from a recent Fretboard Journal article by John Thomas. It came up in discussion prior to the CMSA convention in Montreal.
The CITES Treaty, subscribed to by the US, Canada and, I believe, all of the EU, bans cross-border movement of endangered species. So ok, you say, I won't bring an ivory-billed woodpecker into Canada.
But no, to us it means that if you have an instrument that contains Brazilian rosewood, tortoise shell, elephant ivory or white (a rare kind of) abalone, that instrument is subject to seizure at the border. AND YOU CAN'T RANSOM IT BACK. (Q: what happens to seized instruments? A vision of border agents sitting around playing some awfully good instruments on their breaks...)
Important: CITES applies to instruments that you own personally, not just stuff that's for sale. The only out is to get import/export permits from both countries, and that's a bigger hassle than most of us are up to.
Realistically, the odds of seizure would appear to be small, meaning terrorism is, ahem, a somewhat more important issue. But I wouldn't cross an international border with an instrument I couldn't afford to lose unless it contained none of the banned materials.
The second caveat is due to the experience of my wife and I when we crossed from Canada to the U.S. last month. After we told the U.S. border agent that we had nothing to declare (true), he noticed the instrument cases in the back of our CR-V and asked what was in them, how much they were worth and whether we'd purchased them in Canada.
I told him the truth, always a good idea here. He believed me (honest face, I guess), but gave a warning: since we hadn't declared the instruments, if we had gotten an agent on a bad day and couldn't prove a negative, i.e., that we HADN'T bought them in Canada, they could have been seized, just like CITES stuff can be seized. However unlike the CITES example, he told us that goods seized for this reason could be subsequently retrieved by paying duty and fines. Still, I don't even want to imagine the hassle (and cost!) of that scenario.
Then he gave us a sensible piece of advice, after which I slapped my forehead for not thinking of it earlier: before going across the border into another country, stop at the U.S. Border Patrol office and register your instruments. Doing so is free and will protect you when you reenter the U.S.. with them.
I have no idea if this is the way to do it if you're a citizen of another country, say a Canadian bringing instruments into the U.S., and the complexities of international law and treaties are way beyond my pay grade, but this sounded like good advice, and we will follow it from now in.
If anyone here KNOWS more about these issues, I for one would be grateful if you would post on the topic. Thanks.
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