Step through the front door of the Haskell Library and you're in the United States.
Walk across the carpeted floor to the circulation desk and you're in Canada. But if you sit down on the couch, you're back in the United States.
The 106-year-old Romanesque building, which straddles the international border, has enjoyed a kind of informal immunity from border restrictions through the years.
But a U.S. Border Patrol crackdown focusing on three unguarded streets linking Derby Line with Stanstead, Quebec, across the border, could soon change that.
"There's been an increase in illegal activity, both north and south, in the last little while," said Mark Henry, the operations officer for the Border Patrol's Swanton sector, which runs across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Under the crackdown, instead of parking their cars outside the library in Quebec and walking to the front door in the United States, Canadian patrons would have to detour through one of two ports of entry linking the municipalities.
Some people are leery about the change.
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