This still happens, albeit not so much in the past few months given recent events.

Alas, I'm not sure this will ever happen to a brown-skinned US passport holder like myself...

I used to see the Italians and the French and the Swiss often wave in "brown" persons using US passports without the authorities even looking at the biodata page. But that was the past -- including within the past ten years. Nowadays, it's rather different than it was say 7-10 years ago.

Exit border control USA?
 

Hi all,

I realize this is a little OT but given the large number of European citizens here who travel frequently to the US, I thought it'd be appropriate.

The Economist has an article detailing what is essentially a proposal to implement exit border control in the US (complete with collection of photos and fingerprint like upon entry). I was wondering what your thoughts were?

Personally I find this would considerably complicate connections between domestic and international flights, and will definitely lead to a recompilation of many MCTs. On the other hand many countries have exit border control (e.g. Schengen, Singapore), so it's not unreasonable for the US to implement this. Then again, photos and fingerprints upon exit seem to be a bit of an exaggeration.

On the plus side, maybe this will lead to international-to-international connections no longer needing to clear US Customs, since travellers would presumably be able to stay in a sterile international departures area?

This would be a right royal pain in the proverbial. Logistically it would be problematic as you would need to completely segregate domestic and international travelers, both departing as well as arriving.

For example if I was to fly from LAS to LAX with the aim of connecting there to a long-haul flight I land in T4 if flying AA. I can then remain airside and walk to TBIT as well as other terminals. At what point do you have your exit controls? What about domestic - domestic connections across terminals?

More significantly how would I get to the Qantas lounge in TBIT when on a domestic flight if I need to pass through border control. That's the bigger question :)

They have been talking about doing this since the early 2000s, and tested various implementations. They haven't followed through because it would be ridiculously expensive.

Well the vast majority of countries in the world have physical exit control and segregate departing international/domestic, so this arrangement wouldn't be impossible or unprecedented. It would just be a pain and expensive to adapt. In your LAX example, they would probably have exit immigration booths in the T4-TBIT connector, so you still wouldn't have to reclear security when doing domestic to international. But the most likely situation will be doing the exit checks at the departure gate, so they won't have to reconfigure the terminals at all. But that's a lot of CBP officers to pay for!

The article says this is to identify folks who have overstayed their visas.

Can't the government already do this when the airline swipes your passport at checkin? Or is there really such a high incidence of fraud that we need more rigorous verification?

This is an interesting point. Presumably Canada and the UK (and possibly others I can't think of) employ this same system without issue so it is interesting that the US doesn't seem to be satisfied with it. On the other hand, does anyone know the reasons behind Schengen and many other countries having exit border control? Presumably this is one of them?

The US does currently conduct electronic exit immigration checks, via the passenger manifest the airline sends them before departure. But the system has flaws, and there are lots of mismatched and missing records, caused by issues with people arriving by air and leaving by land, names misspelled on manifests, etc. Whether these flaws are worth the cost to fix is up for debate, though.

UK used to do physical exit checks but dropped them years ago because they decided it wasn't worth the money. This also allows them to have a setup like T5 at Heathrow where departing domestic and international passengers mix.

But there's no question about it, physical exit checks are the most thorough way to make sure that people are leaving when they're supposed to, and that's why most countries use them.

The first law passed saying the US needing to implement physical exit controls was 1996. 20 years later and it still hasn't happened. Trump can write executive orders until he's blue in the face, but I'm skeptical this time will be any different. Reconfiguring the airports would cost billions and just isn't going to happen. CBP estimates doing it at the gate would require 7-9 officers per plane which doesn't sound much cheaper.

CBP hiring rates would have to increase tremendously for this to be done directly by CBP employees.

By the way, there is an effort to significantly lower the hiring standards for CBP employment, and that has to do with being able to grow CBP employment rolls. ;)

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/07/po...p-hiring-slow/

This memo is some of the source material on the employment growth challenges CBP would face if doing this:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/im...7/cbp-memo.pdf

I had an exit check at ORD in 2005, but it was voluntary. I got a receipt with a massive 2D barcode, stapled it into my passport, and forgot about it.

Turns out the airline never turned in my I-94W to show I'd left the country, so the next time I tried to enter, the CBP agent raised her eyebrows at something that came up when she scanned my passport and started a very unpleasant sentence before flipping through my passport, seeing the receipt, and saying "oh, good, make sure you keep this".

If goal is to prevent people from overstaying, why put up physical immigration exits check? We want them to leave easily.

The government's goal is to monitor and control people. That includes preventing some people from leaving too easily.

It's not to stop overstayers from leaving, it's to do a better job of catching them. That said, it would also be used to stop criminals, US citizens and foreigners alike, from trying to flee.