Originally Posted by
seawolf
I think we are going in circles here. Not enough public information around to support that is the case. My speculation that other countries are refusing to accept pre-clearance from US without reciprocity is just as valid as your speculation that CBP is purposely withholding from sending out pre-clearance. And if that is case then I consider that a very concrete legitimate reason why CBP is not going to invest in infrastructure to connect to the ABTC exchange network if no country is going to accept US applications and this thing may go away in 2018 when authorization runs out.
One of your concern is ABTC is no fast track without valid country endorsement. Another speculation...maybe DHS roadmap is to emphasize on trusted traveller with other countries. Australia/NZ/Korea already offers it (as well as non-APEC such as Germany and Netherlands) to US GE members. There is rumor Singapore might do so as well. Since this duplicates ABTC fast track and GE is permanently authorized and allows for CBP to interview foreigners seeking GE in return; spending funds on trusted traveler agreements instead of ABTC seem to make more sense to me. If this is the case, I would consider this also a legitimate reason to not send pre-clearance out.
I stand by my opinion that blaming CBP for not sending out per-clearance out without legitimate reason is pre-mature given what we don't know.
As indicated earlier, there is already precedent that fast track is granted for ABTC card holders without endorsement for that country. US and Canada provide fast track for all ABTC card in existence and not a single one of them is VALID FOR TRAVEL to USA or CAN.
If other countries don't allow fast track without endorsement for US/Canada ABTC, easily addressed by CBP/CBSA by sending ABTC card holders from those countries to regular immigration line until an understanding is reached between CBP/CBSA and that other country's immigration.
Seawolf has the right idea here.
The point of ABTC, and what all the full members agreed to, is to facilitate travel across the entire region for businessmen of all member economies. Therefore if one economy started asking for pre-clearance for its citizens while refusing to grant it for others that would create a whole lot of ill feelings. As it stands, several economies have already pointedly expressed frustration about the gradual pace of U.S. progress toward full membership.
It is worth mentioning here that most if not all economies are operating the ABTC program under fairly tight budgets, and therefore have limited staff resources. Already they are facing tough challenges to keep pace with processing the rapidly rising number of pre-clearance requests from other economies. Therefore some unlucky applicants (in full member economies) may find themselves waiting as long as 6 months to get pre-clearance approval from all 19 full members.
So the other economies are unlikely to be eager to add to their processing burdens unless there is a clear benefit for their own citizens. Of course, if the U.S. were willing to reciprocate, then the other economies would be extremely happy to process U.S. pre-clearance requests.