tecate55

Hi, I've gone through a few of these after arriving internationally.

Usually it was a really quick glance that didn't slow things down, but yesterday at Pearson they seemed to take a bit of time verifying passports (take off hat, really check pic against passenger, seems to have even sniffed mine?). This lead to offboarding delays and lineups on the jetbridge leaving the aircraft (2 officers and ~450 pax can do that...)

Are these mostly random or targeted? They were also checking the flight that came from the adjacent jetbridge, so I suspect it was "random".

Was really annoying because our flight was already delayed by several hours.

YVR Cockroach

Probably targetting refugee claimants. This way, they know where such pax originated from. The usual tactic is to destroy travel documents between disembarkation and passport control so they cannot be returned to country of origin. Where was your flight from?

tecate55

Paris and the neighbouring flight that was checked was from London-Heathrow. That tactic is kinda ineffective when the FAs announce on the aircraft that there will be a passport check at the bridge before anyone gets off.

YVR Cockroach

Can still cross-check the pax against flight manifest to determine origin, or at least pin the carrier for costs to return pax. Not making a statement about refugee claimants but the logic behind the process.

@GUWonder may have a lot more to say about this.

Davvidd

I have had a couple of flights that got checked. The foreign passport holders were more throughly checked with Canadian passport holders or PR just look at the picture and face and letting them go. I would say it could be a tip off as Canada does have Advance Passenger Information System.

GUWonder

The tactic isn’t necessarily ineffective, dislike it as I often do. The tactic of prepping the passengers while still on board an arriving flight is meant to make things smoother during deplaning when this kind of CBSA activity is to be underway. [The CBSA is using the US CBP playbook, and so are the airlines when doing this.] Beside flagging people earlier who may have hidden, destroyed or tossed a passport between boarding and arrival at the Canadian airport of entry or even flown without a passport or valid passport substitute, it also may provide CBSA more/easier time to profile and/or claim its behavioral profiling of passengers.

Sometimes they do this just to try to get lucky and catch some people using an invalid passport or fraudulently using a real passport and they want the catches at the gate so as to more easily return irregular travelers to the country of flight origin or to get a baseline understanding of how things go. Sometimes it’s a show just to have a sort of buzz/feedback that they are trying to stop and turn around irregular immigrants at airports. Sometimes it’s being done on multiple flights at around the same time in order to be a distraction or mask that they have a specific, already identified/suspected target to grab or monitor but don’t want to be too obvious with what was the investigative/intelligence trail that flagged the target(s). Sometimes it’s because they have vetted the passenger manifests and gotten hits they want to grab sooner than later. Sometimes they have tailored leads with specific flights or routes in mind. Sometimes it’s done because a show of force in one place may take the heat off them in other places or in other ways.

tecate55

Yeah, it's a lot of speculation as to why they'd do this. Seems like it was random in this case, but I doubt they'll confirm if it was or not.

We'll see how my various complaints will go. I'm particularly upset because, as mentioned this flight was already delayed, and I went through the process for Nexus but it seems like its manpower savings were redeployed into other ways of universally wasting passengers' time for no net benefit.

GUWonder

Unfortunately, that which both (a) frees up — or even directly or indirectly funds the potential freeing up of — border control resources and (b) very often speeds up entries for a segment of cross-border travelers also opens the door to the redeployment of resources such that it makes for more extreme variance with the arrival (or even departure) process.

Institutions like this aren’t going to willfully engineer themselves into becoming much, much smaller fiefdoms with much reduced headcounts and budgets — rather they tend to be like the kings who measure their wealth and power by headcount and amount of money coming their way.

Even when they don’t catch anyone, they can alternately hide behind saying it’s random and saying it’s based on intelligence/leads. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

TheCanuckian

This article may add pertinent context. And if they are related, we may be seeing more of these checks.

tedders

I'm a dual citizen and carried both passports at one point in time while I was Going LAX -> SFO -> YVR.
I decided to go out of SFO to see family for lunch and then headed back to the airport.

I've forgotten why, but I decided to present my passport from a 3rd world country even though I had my Canadian passport too.
After I passed check-in and got my boarding passes, I proceeded to security and got put into one of those secondary checks where they open up your carry-on luggage, swab it, and then pass you through that full body imaging cylinder.
One of the security guys, from the same country I was, noted to me that my boarding pass had a mark to send me for extra checks because I used my 3rd world country passport.

Learned that I should always just present my Canadian passport.

yoonland

Did your BP state SSSS on the Remarks side? I've used my South Korean passport and Canadian ID and both seem to just give similar exprience so I doubt it would be based on nationality

TravellingChris

I've experienced inbound CBSA checks at the end of the jetway quite a few times in my travel career. It always seems to be flights from major hub airports that receive a lot of traffic from the Third World, such as London, Paris and Frankfurt. I've never experienced these checks when flying in from cities like Warsaw, Brussels or Lisbon. The most recent one was getting off a flight from Heathrow. The passengers in front of me with foreign passports were being asked questions about why they were coming to Canada, whom they would be visiting, and how they were financing their travels. Those of us who were Canadian citizens got a quick check of the passport page, a glance at the face and "Welcome home."

wysiwyg

I noticed that each time I return to Canada on AF they always announce that there will be a passport check upon exiting the aircraft, so I prepare it and never see anyone requesting it. When I fly AC, they never announce this except once coming back from Vegas, there was indeed a check and I presented my Nexus card, as that is all that I use on the machine. The CBSA agent Insisted on seeing the passport.

yoonland

NEXUS supports identity and citizenship, not sure why they need to see your passport, I never had a problem just showing my PR card

wysiwyg

I know, it made no sense, but you never want to argue with a CBSA officer, so I just reached for my passport and moved on.