Come June 30, 2014 a new initiative will be launched in order to track your movement across the Canada-US border. This program is known as the Entry/Exit Initiative of the Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan and will change how the days one spends in Canada and the US are tracked.

Under today’s system, both Canada and the US keep track of the day you enter the country, but not when you leave and neither country is in the habit of sharing this information with each other. On June 30, 2014, both Canada and the US will begin sharing this information with one another as to when people enter and leave their respective countries. Therefore, Snowbirds will no longer be able to say that the US has no way of knowing how long they have been inside their borders. In fact, both Canada and the US will be tracking your days in and out of the country and they will have a detailed report of your whereabouts. This now underscores the importance for all snowbirds to keep their own detailed report of how many days they have been in the US so that their reporting can reflect the records being kept by government authorities.

Recently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection shared some insight into how their tracking system will work. Canadians can now go online to see how many days they are deemed to have been in the US over the past five years. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website now allows individuals to request the report of your days in the U.S. if you have your passport number, full name, and birthdate. This new tool allows you to compare your tracking with the border's records and advise them if there is an error before potentially being denied entry back into the US for having surpassed your alotted number of days. Should the report show that you spent more than six months in the US for any given year and you want to continue spending more than half of the year in the US, you will need a viable immigration strategy to continue your cross border lifestyle.