Nexus/GE Fingerprint Scanning at YYZ - Appointment Required?
 

I'm a NEXUS member and on my GOES, it says that I can have my fingerprints taken to get GE privileges. I'd like to do this at YYZ but I'm wondering if an appointment is required or if I can just drop in and do it.

Any recent experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Global Entry is a U.S. government program, so I am guessing that you can't get a fingerprint scan for GE at YYZ. You can get an iris scan for Nexus with no appointment at YYZ, but Nexus is a bilateral program (and an iris scan is a Canadian only requirement for air entry).

It is probably best to ask your YYZ question on the AC forum under the Nexus Thread.

I know you can get your irises scanned for NEXUS with no appointment at several Canadian airports. (I did mine at YVR.)

I wonder if Canadian NEXUS stations are set up to take fingerprints at all, since NEXUS uses iris scans. US airports certainly don't scan irises, or I would have taken care of that on our side of the border. ;)

US CBP doesn't use Iris scans execept at Canadian preclearance facilities. Theoretically, if you had an iris scan you could use the Global Entry kiosk to enter the US Customs preclearance facility at a Canadian airport, but it wouldn't help entering Canada. I don't see the point of doing it at this point, but I'd just point that out.

Guessed wrong. Guessing really doesn't offer much or help anyone, less so when it is wrong.

There are as many US CBP agents at the YYZ NEXUS office as there are Canadians.

Go there. Sign in on the US clipboard and write Fingerprints only and they'll call you over. Ask for your little CBP passport sticker too, they have 100's of them.

The Global Entry machines do not do iris scans at US pre-clearance which is why they have both GE machines (fingerprints) and NEXUS machines (iris) at US preclearance. Use either if qualified for either.

If you have no fingerprint scans even if you are enrolled in GE (automatically) as part of NEXUS you won't be able to physically use the GE machine. It reads fingerprints.

Your entire post is quite confusing frankly. There are two programs with two differing types of authentications. If you have the iris scan you must have NEXUS so you just use that machine. If that's all you have then you can't use GE at all.

Thus the corollary is that GE only members (US based who never applied for NEXUS at all) would use a GE machine and would not have the ability to enter Canada quickly with NEXUS , not having it of course.

Yes, you can have it done without an appointment, just like you can go in and have iris scanning done without an appointment if you had your NEXUS interview done at one of the centers without the iris camera. When I got NEXUS ~2.5 years ago, they were already doing the full 10 fingerprint scanning for everyone.

Why in the world would that be? There is a major CBP operation at YYZ and every NEXUS enrollment center has operated as a GE enrollment center since they made the programs fully integrated on the US side.

Not really. People in this forum know as much, if not more, about GE and even NEXUS than those in the AC forum.

I was just in YYZ airport yesterday and the NEXUS office is located right next to the immigration hall entrance for US-bound flights in Pier H.

I walked in, put my name down on the "update" list and I was called 3 minutes later. There are two lists to put your name down for - appointments (must be scheduled in advance) and "updates".

The CBSA officer took my NEXUS card, four pictures of my eyes and then a fifth shot to confirm it could read my iris correctly and confirm it's me.

I then went through the immigration hall but because I think fingerprints are more easily read than irises I decided to use the GE machine. As always, worked like a champ.

-RM