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Originally Posted by Kumulani
(Post 28022776)
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.
To a certain extent, I think relaxing some of the hiring requirements for CBP officers is a good thing. For one thing, the polygraph test they have to take is ridiculous pseudoscience. Relaxing the hiring qualification requirements for CBP is not a good idea unless you want to see more TSA-like outcomes. |
Originally Posted by Kumulani
(Post 28021076)
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.
Surely fixing the system/communication issues is substantially cheaper/easier than hiring thousands of extra officers. |
Originally Posted by Kumulani
(Post 28021076)
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.
From The Daily Beast: How Donald Trump’s New Ban Will Make Airports Even Worse Excerpts: *** Section 8 of the president’s new travel ban executive order requires the secretary of Homeland Security to “expedite the completion and implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for in-scope travelers to the United States, as recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” *** ...a biometric exit system would require that all non-citizens go through one more security line before boarding planes leaving the U.S. for other countries. That’s how these systems work in other nations that have them, he noted. The Department of Homeland Security would have to have staffers at every international airport in the U.S. gathering biometric data on the hundred thousand (or more) non-citizens who fly in and out of the U.S. every day. And those lines could get long. *** Besides inconveniencing international travelers, these biometric exit tracking set-ups would also take up valuable airport real estate. And the executive order didn’t make it clear if airports themselves or the federal government—meaning taxpayers—would have to shoulder those costs. *** |
There is simply no way to do this without segregating international departures at every single US airport with an international flight - it's just plain impossible.
Not to mention, it's none of the US government's business when I leave the country, for what reason, or where I'm going, which is why I use two passports when traveling internationally. Right now, a typical flight for most people to an international destination might involve boarding a domestic flight at, say, FLL, then arriving EWR and remaining airside in the same terminal, then walking to a connecting gate to board a flight out of the USA. Exactly where and how can they implement an exit control check area without a complete redesign of 99% of US airport terminals with at least one international departure? It just cannot be done. There are literally countless US airports with international departures, even just to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. |
The only way they could possibly do it is at each gate, on every jetway, and there isn't space to have two lines (one for US citizens and LPRs, the other for everyone else) down the jetway. Even the few US airports that have a dedicated international terminal are not set up for hard exit processing.
The cost for a border wall pales in comparison to cost of building dedicated facilities at the dozens and dozens of US airports that have at least one international departure each day. It won't happen. I don't know if they removed it, but there used to be one of the trial CBP exit kiosks at I believe the D terminal at Dulles. It sat in a corner for a couple of years, never used, never moved, just taking up space. |
If staffed with enough CBP employees, it could be done at the gate/jetbridge. But staffing all gates/jetbridges with CBP employees to scan biometrics on departure would probably mean worse cut-off times for checking in, connecting and boarding passengers and/or a substantial increase in expenditures.
Watch out for this resulting in much higher costs for even those flying out of the US on mileage and other paid tickets. Watch out for this resulting in bigger federal government budget expenditures (and national debt) too. |
Originally Posted by Kumulani
(Post 28021095)
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.
Originally Posted by seawolf
(Post 28022529)
If goal is to prevent people from overstaying, why put up physical immigration exits check? We want them to leave easily.
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Originally Posted by joshwex90
(Post 28029313)
I've arrived in LHR and cleared passport control and I've transited LHR and not cleared. So let's say I transit, if I'm with domestic pax, what's stopping me from just exiting, without clearing passport control? At least countries with exit control can segregate pax OR countries like the US require you to have cleared passport control just to transit
The UK authorities can use that info to determine who is "landed" domestically and who is not. To go from airside/FCC at LHR to get landside at LHR requires going through the same general areas as international arrivals. And that too is where a control is applicable.
Originally Posted by joshwex90
(Post 28029313)
In theory, it improves the "catching" system, so someone who overstayed (or multiple times) could be denied future visas, or thrown out of the VWP
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
(Post 28029322)
The domestic UK passengers have photos taken and combined with the boarding pass info to know who was a domestic passenger and who was not, and thus the passport/national ID card isn't required.
The UK authorities can use that info to determine who is "landed" domestically and who is not. To go from airside/FCC at LHR to get landside at LHR requires going through the same general areas as international arrivals. And that too is where a control is applicable. |
Originally Posted by joshwex90
(Post 28029346)
So once a domestic passenger clears security, the only way out is through passport control? (Never flown domestically in UK - just transited or departed internationally)
Effectively, via that same general area. |
Unless Congress foots the bill, I just can't see all the various municipal and county outfits that run most of the major airports coughing up the cash for this effort.
Other than a handful of airports that (IIRC) were built with this in mind for easy conversion (LAX, IAH and MIA I think?), we'd be talking about a very long lead time to put in place hard exit controls. And we can't just do it at gateways—think about every "international" airport with a once-a-day flight to Mexico City or Toronto. As for lowering the hiring standards of CBP: <deleted>. CBP is an armed federal agency. |
The issue is that, say at LAX, not all international flights go in and out of the "international" terminal. They're spread out at other terminals. If you segregated all international departures and arrivals in one spot, the US airlines would spend a lot of time towing planes from one terminal to the other. They would need duplicate operations at the same airport, duplicate lounges, customer service centers, etc. It wouldn't be that big of a deal for the international airlines, but each major airport in the US tends to be the hub for one airline or another.
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Originally Posted by joshwex90
(Post 28029346)
So once a domestic passenger clears security, the only way out is through passport control? (Never flown domestically in UK - just transited or departed internationally)
There is no public airside exit that does not involve going through immigration. For domestic arriving flights, they are shunted into an arrivals corridor that allows them to either exit the terminal, or have their boarding pass scanned to enter the gate area. |
Originally Posted by txflyer77
(Post 28030100)
As for lowering the hiring standards of CBP: <deleted>. CBP is an armed federal agency.
And CBP is understaffed, regardless of any border policy changes. |
Originally Posted by catocony
(Post 28030266)
The issue is that, say at LAX, not all international flights go in and out of the "international" terminal. They're spread out at other terminals. If you segregated all international departures and arrivals in one spot, the US airlines would spend a lot of time towing planes from one terminal to the other. They would need duplicate operations at the same airport, duplicate lounges, customer service centers, etc. It wouldn't be that big of a deal for the international airlines, but each major airport in the US tends to be the hub for one airline or another.
This would be expensive though, and would make more sense for new construction than retrofits. A more practical solution would be to modify some existing international gates so that arriving passengers would be taken through corridors to the domestic departures area, and set up a few domestic gates so they could shunt people to international arrivals. This would be a good compromise between minimizing towing and minimizing construction costs. |
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