Can You Go to Canada with a DUI?

I get a lot of clients that ask, “Can I go to Canada with a DUI?” The short, simple answer is, “No.” But there’s a “maybe” behind it. If you have a DUI conviction, there is a period of time that can go by where Canada may consider you rehabilitated, but there’s a lot of paperwork hurdles that you’re gonna have to get through in order to go there. For example, if you’ve been suspended by our Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Not even convicted, you’ve been suspended, Canada will treat that as a conviction and you are persona non grata. So you’re going up with all your friends up to Labrador for some big expensive, exotic fishing trip to go for Big Brook Trout, and you get to the border, and they let everybody go except you. They tell you you gotta turn around. That’s not a place you wanna be. If you have any concerns about admission Canada or you’re thinking about traveling, that’s where you need to get an immigration attorney involved, hopefully on the Canadian side, to guide you through that process. But again, the short answer is, “No. you are not admissible to Canada.”