Readers might be interested in seeing an article I wrote for
Family Chronicle on the "St. Alban's" border crossing records.
There are several things to note. First, there are two name indexes to
some of the records, a soundex and an alphabetical index. Second, in
addition to crossings >from Candada into the US, there are also ship
manifests for boats arriving in Canadian ports like Halifax and Montreal.
The US Government convinced ships entering Canadian ports to prepare a
separate ship's manifest for travellers who intended to continue on to the US.
These manifests look just like what you see on the Ellis Island website.

As an example of why this is worth pursuing, consider the following.
My father's family came to NY as visitors in 1940 and then had to leave
the country and re-enter to be permanent residents. I knew >from their
citizenship papers that they took the train to Montreal, then turned around
and re-entered the US at Rousses Point, NY. I went to NARA and looked
quickly through one of the name indexes and didn't find them. On another
trip to NYC I decided to try again. This time I found them. I hadn 't
expected to find any new genealogical information but, surprise, there was
one item: under name of closest relative or friend in place >from whence alien
came was listed my grandfather's newphew! Evidently, he had left Hungary
and made it to France. Two years earlier, when my father's family came to
the US as visitors, they had listed their neighbor as their closest
friend or neighbor in France. Now if only I could find out what was the
fate of my grandfather's nephew... He's not in the list of people deported

from France so maybe he survived.

You can download a pdf file with my article free of charge by going to

http://www.fisheries.vims.edu/hoenig/professor.html

There are other articles there on genealogy you might also find of interest.

John Hoenig
Virginia, USA