Actually, what I posted remained true even after ESTA became a standard requirement for US VWP entries.

It is only within more recent weeks that USVWP passengers have been told filling out the I-94s is no longer a general requirement, and even then the exit controls of the sort I mentioned are still in play.

For years now, the passport details of passengers departing the US on flights has been used by DHS as part of US exit passport control. That remains the case, ESTA-user, US citizen or otherwise.

I fully support exit controls at all US airports and land borders.

Just imagine the hundreds of thousands of new jobs this will create.
There will be a need for at least 10,000 new CBP officers. Airports
and land crossing checkpoints will need to construct exit controls,
which means thousands of new construction jobs. The DHS will
need to spend probably 50 to 75 million dollars for TV commercials
and print ads to educate the public.

All new land border ports that are being constructed are being built with the ability to direct traffic to outbound booths for the purpose of outbound operations and exit control. Exit control has been mandated by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act since 1997. However, it has never been sufficiently funded by Congress.

FB

Wow! Really? Do you think it is possible that all major international airports eventually might be reconfigured to keep international departures areas sterile, like in the EU and South America and Asia?

That would require a huge investment on the part of the government, I suspect.

With the green I-94W's no longer in use, how does CBP know when visitors have left? Is it all going off what the airlines submit to DHS upon departure?

They didn't hand out any I-94Ws on CX830 yesterday. I had thought that the ESTA only was still being tested at LAX. There were still the green forms lying around at CBP in JFK T7, but they didn't ask why I didn't have one.

CX run a US entry/exit procedures video prior to landing. The video mentioned that you would be required to use a USVISIT exit kiosk prior to departing. I thought that those kiosks didn’t work and they pulled them all out years ago after the trial period finished.

Would it not also require some common sense? Which the US government is sorely lacking.

For all my intl trips, I fly on AA out of JFK, I scan my passport in the self-check-in terminal and I get my bp. I put my passport away in my luggage and use my dl to go through security. NO ONE looks at my pp until I arrive at my foreign destination--AA does not do pp checks at the gate. Now that I can print my bp at home, I am curious how this plays out: they have my pp number on file (I gave it to them), but if the above scenario plays out NOW, I would still be allowed to fly even if I left my pp home.
On several trips out of LHR, no govt agent looked at my pp, only AA agents at the gate. [One or two times there was a "govt official" looking at pp's.]

Yes, asking these questions of a citizen and/or legal resident of the US is internal immigration / exit control depending on the ultimate destination?

What if my plane ticket took me to my legal residence in the USA, and the CBP officer asked me if I planned to travel the next day (internally or internationally)? Next week? Next month, next year, next decade, etc? At what point do you consider those questions Soviet-esque? What if the GE or Nexus kiosk asked the same questions?




I'll be using GE, so no consumables coming back on this trip.

I don't think so. Many international airports have international terminals. So put an exit control at the entrances. Solved.

For those international airports without international terminals, most of those have international arrivals halls connected to one terminal. So rope off part of that terminal to use for exit controls. Solved. The investment is pretty much in doubling the CBP airport workforce.

Not likely in our lifetimes: it's not even that way in all of the EU, South America and Asia; and DHS remains paranoid about the idea of airside transits without an opportunity to "process" all for border "security" purposes, including specifically immigration control.

To further ramp up exit controls (beyond that which the US already has), doesn't necessarily require investment as much as it would involve expanding the government workfare workfarce known as DHS/CBP and just flushing down more money that way.

Wow, you have no real understanding of CBP nor US airports. The vast majority of US airports with international flights do not have a physically separate international terminal. Many have a few flights a day to Canada or Mexico or somewhere in the Caribbean. Even airports that do have "international" terminals - like SFO - also have domestic flights flying out of that terminal. Some airports with "international" terminals - like ATL and LAX- also have international flights leaving out of the regular terminals.

So, no, it's not as easy as just putting up some CBP booths on the other side of TSA to process foreigners heading out of the US. Since there is currently no constitutional requirement for US citizens to have permission to leave the country, there will never be exit controls on US citizens. So, there's zero chance that a system of international-only airport terminals will be built just to process foreign visitors on their exiting flights.

Addressed in my post.


So what? The frequency makes no difference; CBP has to staff the inbounds of all flights from Mexico and those flights from Canada with no U.S. pre-clearance.

The international (including Canada and Mexico) outbound flights can be moved to the international terminal, and the domestic flights out of the international terminal.

As for Constitutionality of exit controls, FB notes that by law, exit controls are supposed to be in place, and on land crossings, they do exist from time to time.

What a completely arrogant, inaccurate comment. What does having exit controls for international flights have to do with "permission" being required for US citizens? That's right, absolutely nothing. Have you ever been to an airport in most other countries outside the other US, whose citizens also don't need "permission" to leave their country? Guess what - many of them have exit controls.

In the US the issue is a logistical one, not a constitutional one. But it is not inconceivable that outbound international flights could be moved to a specific area, or set of areas within an airport, just as inbound ones are today. The simplest way of achieving this would be to nominate a set of gates at the end of a concourse as outbound international gates and put a series of CBP desks there. It could even be a temporary setup that was only activated for a number of hours each day.

It really is only a matter of time before a system like this is put in place.

I do the same about going through security. I use my passport to get my boarding pass, then put it away and use my domestic ID to get through security. TSA never bats an eye, even when I'm clearing security at the station from which my international flight departs (no connection).

But, the gate is another matter. I've flown AA to Europe out of DFW a half dozen times this year, and every single time, the gate agent began boarding with the announcement "please have your passport in hand as well as your boarding pass!"

The agents didn't actually open the passports or look at the ID pages. Instead, they just wanted to see that each passenger HAD a passport, so that nobody would arrive in Europe without one.

OLCI complicates things a bit, because theoretically a passenger could enter the details online, and then get all the way to the gate without ever showing an airline or government employee in person that he/she has a valid passport in his/her possession. This probably makes the airlines a bit nervous, because a lot of revenue is at stake.

So, I believe that AA is checking for a passport in hand at international departure gates because if a passenger arrives overseas without his/her passport (left it in the bathroom, lost it somewhere, forgot it at home, etc), then the person cannot be admitted and the AIRLINE has to transport the person back to the origin country at the AIRLINE'S expense, because it was the AIRLINE'S fault for allowing the passenger to board without proper international documentation.

The interesting thing is, DFW is the only station where the agents have consistently checked for passports at the boarding gate for international flights. Never happened at JFK, and happened maybe 50% of the time at MIA.


Um...that's incorrect. Of course US Citizens have to get government permission to leave the country. In fact, it's a two-step process:

1) Applying for a passport means applying for permission to leave the country. The State Dept can approve or deny these applications. If you get into legal trouble, one of the easiest things they can do is confiscate your passport (which remains US Govt property at all times).

2) Obtaining a boarding pass for an international flight. Before the airlines are permitted to issue you a boarding pass, your passport data are entered and your record must be checked against multiple government databases to be sure you aren't fleeing US jurisdiction with an active arrest warrant, outstanding child support, custody issues, tax problems, etc. If the US Govt doesn't want you leaving the country, agencies can red-flag you, and the airlines will deny you boarding.



So....yes, US Citizens do need government permission to leave the country, for each and every instance of international travel. Now, it usually doesn't involve an investigation/interrogation of the type that citizens of some other countries get from officials as they try to leave, but rest assured, an investigation is happening in the background every time the airline agent swipes your passport in the computer to request permission to generate an international boarding pass for you.

Absolutely true, and not just commercially. Private flights must now wait until CBP grants them permission to depart to "insure the passengers are not on the 'no fly' list." FB has specifically stated it is coming to land crossing in private vehicles too. When will we be erecting statues of Stalin and Lenin? Electronic or paper, seen or unseen, exit permissions are exit visas by any other name. I am not wondering if? anymore, I am wondering when and how?

So, when I walk across the US/Mexico border, I somehow received clearance from the US government to do so? If I drive or take a bus across the Canadian border? If I take a speedboat or sailboat or cabin cruiser from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas, I somehow received clearance as well? You guys are assume that air travel is the only way to leave the US. That is not true and is in fact a very small percentage of crossings per day. So, don't confuse regulations for international air travel out of the US with leaving the US in general.

Back to the OP's point, again, if you want to reconfigure every US airport that has a departing international flight, think about those costs for every airport. As someone who travels internationally at least once a month - for close to 15 years now - and have flown, driven, walked, bussed and gone by boat and ferry as well, there are a lot of ways to leave the US that don't involve buying a plane ticket or applying for a passport for each and every instance of international travel.

You obviously missed Firebug's post about the land border checkpoints being modified to support OUTBOUND checks of all parties and the other reference posts to the DHS desire to require an eAPIS-like program for boaters.