How to lose $41K at checkpoint...
Aug 12, 2014, 2:10 pm
#61
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A series of purchases/payments necessary for rural medical care in some parts of the world doesn't take place in a timely manner -- if at all -- with personal checks, money orders or retail bank transfers when the poor family needs to procure and/or pay for all the medicines and supply it to the hospital/clinic doctors/nurses for treatment themselves. In such situations, ending up with trickled money isn't generally ideal and adds stress to an already stressful situation. Having all the funds sent as a lump-sum makes sense since travel expenses and other transactional costs rise substantially if the poor family have to repeatedly run around more because the money was trickled to them rather than sent in lump sum.
Lots of rural hospitals/clinics/physicians/nurses and pharmacies in Asia and Africa don't take ATM or other bank cards or don't take them from
everybody; nor do the individuals who a poor family may need to pay to get the potentially life-saving transfers (for example bone marrow transfers) arranged and covered to have the potentially life-saving medical care for the child. And when a poor person is an ethnic or religious minority in an area where communal conflicts are long-standing, things tend to get harder for such poor families desperate to legally save a life and fortunate enough to have a foreign sponsor barely willing and able to transfer the necessary money -- which had exceeded $10,000 -- for the medical treatment. This isn't imagination. This is the real world.
Lots of rural hospitals/clinics/physicians/nurses and pharmacies in Asia and Africa don't take ATM or other bank cards or don't take them from
everybody; nor do the individuals who a poor family may need to pay to get the potentially life-saving transfers (for example bone marrow transfers) arranged and covered to have the potentially life-saving medical care for the child. And when a poor person is an ethnic or religious minority in an area where communal conflicts are long-standing, things tend to get harder for such poor families desperate to legally save a life and fortunate enough to have a foreign sponsor barely willing and able to transfer the necessary money -- which had exceeded $10,000 -- for the medical treatment. This isn't imagination. This is the real world.
If a patient needs complicated care that can't be found in those areas, they go to the city where it is available. And those places accept credit cards.
I've spent a couple of decades in those parts of the world. Again, there is no legal reason to need $10,000 in cash.
Aug 12, 2014, 2:52 pm
#62
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I have lived and worked in areas like you describe. DR Congo. Northern Bangladesh. Northern Angola. Highlands of Papua New Guinea. To name a few. In those places $10,000 will buy you the entire hospital. Medical treatment simply isn't that expensive in those places.
If a patient needs complicated care that can't be found in those areas, they go to the city where it is available. And those places accept credit cards.
I've spent a couple of decades in those parts of the world. Again, there is no legal reason to need $10,000 in cash.
If a patient needs complicated care that can't be found in those areas, they go to the city where it is available. And those places accept credit cards.
I've spent a couple of decades in those parts of the world. Again, there is no legal reason to need $10,000 in cash.
You seem to be talking about limited areas where (natural resource) extractive industries are the norm and foreign multinational companies come in and run the those shows. Not all areas in the world are like that -- especially not all those poor areas where there is no nearby operational presence of large scale extractive industries with lots of foreigners running the show and exploiting it to the max.
Getting legitimates medicines and other supplies for tests and treatment of some diseases/disorders and needing to find and utilize organ or marrow donors can easily run a family -- in even the poorest rural parts of Bangladesh or India or Myanmar -- well over $10,000 in cash very, very quickly for some diseases. And the money burns up faster if they have to get to and stay in big cities for treatment. The money may turn out to be wasted and have a low degree of delivering successful results, but it's entirely legitimate for a poor family to need and spend $10,000 in cash to try to save their beloved, seriously ill child with some small chance of living into adulthood.
Most of the poor people in these parts of the world have credit cards? What a dream world.
Aug 12, 2014, 5:29 pm
#63
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Aug 13, 2014, 12:21 am
#64
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I find that the transaction costs between USD and GBP are quite low - in fact rather less than the exorbitant costs that my regular US bank charges for handling US$ entirely within the US.
What I do find ridiculous though is that, if my US retail business has a particularly strong Friday, Saturday and Sunday, our bank makes us go through all sorts of hoops to pay in more than $10,000 in cash (most sales are by card so this is not all that frequent). I always ask what Walmart does, but never get a straight answer.
What I do find ridiculous though is that, if my US retail business has a particularly strong Friday, Saturday and Sunday, our bank makes us go through all sorts of hoops to pay in more than $10,000 in cash (most sales are by card so this is not all that frequent). I always ask what Walmart does, but never get a straight answer.
Aug 13, 2014, 1:56 am
#65
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A lot of rambling here about need for cash in exotic places, etc. That is why you CAN take any amount of money or cash equivalents out of the U.S. You just have to fill out the form.
Aug 13, 2014, 12:12 pm
#66
Join Date: May 2004
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You are quite right about carrying cash. U.S. controls regarding the carrying of cash aren't that onerous. I think one of the problems is that some people are unaware of the reporting requirement or fear that the reporting requirement is a restriction, an opportunity for graft, or a creating a taxation liability.
Aug 13, 2014, 12:43 pm
#67
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Very rarely when I read these stories do I see a situation where someone simply had a lot of money on them, carried in an ordinary manner, and when asked about it, made a truthful declaration, getting innocently caught by a regulation that they didn't know about that required them to declare it proactively. Rather, it almost always involves one if not several aspects which made it clear that the person was deliberately trying to avoid declaring the money.
Aug 13, 2014, 1:21 pm
#68
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For those who are guessing about the motive of the $41k lady; this is the line of questioning flying out of DTW or ATL on TPAC flight by departure CBP agents in the jetbridge after boarding pass scan:
Where are you going to?
How long are you staying there for?
What is the purpose of your visit?
Who are you staying with?
How much money are you carrying?
Are you sure you are not carrying more than $10,000?
You have to declare money you are taking out of the US if it is more than $10,000.
The DL TPAC departure gates have the direct escalator to custom hall where "private screening rooms" are available.
Where are you going to?
How long are you staying there for?
What is the purpose of your visit?
Who are you staying with?
How much money are you carrying?
Are you sure you are not carrying more than $10,000?
You have to declare money you are taking out of the US if it is more than $10,000.
The DL TPAC departure gates have the direct escalator to custom hall where "private screening rooms" are available.
Last edited by tentseller; Aug 13, 2014 at 1:33 pm
Aug 13, 2014, 10:04 pm
#69
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What has happened to the costs of sending money between OECD countries (eg US to UK) as a result of these surveillance/control measures is not comparable to what has happened to the cost of sending labor remittances from say the US to Haiti or from London to Tajikistan since the post-9/11 crackdown on international money transfers of various sorts.
Aug 14, 2014, 1:14 am
#70
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It's better that those poor countries benefit from cheaper, personal remittances from abroad than: (a) become (more) reliant upon foreign state (taxpayer) handouts; and/or (b) or become economically more desperate and willing to look elsewhere for "enrichment", unjust or otherwise, that may further destabilize those remittance-"dependent" states that can conceivably become failed states or fail more massively. A state that fails or is failing more exports more people -- with legal immigration compliance but an afterthought for those more desperate people.
Aug 14, 2014, 8:00 am
#71
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It's better that those poor countries benefit from cheaper, personal remittances from abroad than: (a) become (more) reliant upon foreign state (taxpayer) handouts; and/or (b) or become economically more desperate and willing to look elsewhere for "enrichment", unjust or otherwise, that may further destabilize those remittance-"dependent" states that can conceivably become failed states or fail more massively. A state that fails or is failing more exports more people -- with legal immigration compliance but an afterthought for those more desperate people.
Aug 14, 2014, 12:24 pm
#72
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It's not reporting limits, it's reporting requirements. Putting in reporting requirements does, directly and indirectly, affect the cost -- in money and in time -- of remittance transfers. Not that everyone, whether playing ostrich or not, cares the same way (if at all). Q.E.D. Especially when paranoia about drug money, terrorism financing and tax evasion drives all of this money surveillance and control mentality.
Last edited by GUWonder; Aug 14, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Aug 31, 2014, 7:25 am
#73
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Sep 1, 2014, 2:46 pm
#75
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 416
I have seen the form coming landing internationally, I have never seen a form leaving any country. Even the signs mentioning the 10K limit at departure, do not mention where or how someone might declare.