Originally Posted by boondoggie
This is customs, another layer in the security web. It doesn't have to be 100% effective to be worthwhile. Presumably people getting on the plane have been through the physical security checks.
It would be great if we could do the entry processing before they got on the plane, but that's not within our control since they're still on foreign soil at that point.
Every problem looks easy to someone that doesn't understand the constraints on the solution.
That physical security is meaningless, as the crew and the passengers themeselves don't believe it protects them. If they believed that the security had done their job right, we would not have cases where people are kicked off a plane after having gone through the security, and we would not have ha crew asking for F-14 escorts.