Isolated Point Roberts struggles with labor, border restrictions

POINT ROBERTS — Isolation has been a universal experience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but no one has experienced isolation quite like Point Roberts and the hundreds of people residing in the small Washington exclave. Point Roberts juts from the mainland of Canada, just below the 49th parallel. Since the start of the pandemic, the economy of the tourist destination — requiring double border crossings to reach from the U.S. mainland — has been gutted, its population has slumped.