Originally Posted by
sadhakim
1) Why does CBSA feel the need to check passports when disembarking a plane rather than at the customs and immigration point?
I really really find this highly annoying and am about to complain to my MP about this behaviour. You just come off a long haul flight, are tired, restless and probably want to stretch your legs a bit and you have to wait in a long lineup for two customs officials to do a "pre" clearance scan? Whats the point?
For one thing, the
airline is responsible if someone without proper documents enters the country. By the time you get to the lineup with all the other flights, it all starts to get rather complicated.
It would be nice, perhaps, to have some sort of digitized recognition system at each arrival gate; however, that would raise privacy concerns (justified or not), it could be very costly (and at YYZ they need all that money to fix the high speed walkway out to the int's pier), and it would have to be designed to work with people who might be actively trying to avoid detection.