US Inmigration outside USA?
 

As far as I know Canada and Ireland have US inmigration in their own countries so you clear inmigrations there.

Any ideas why this is like this in Ireland and since when?

Any other US inmigrations outside the US?

Bahamas for sure and I think Aruba

Given the fact that the US government wants to know the colour of my underwear when I dare to travel to the "Land of the Free", the answer to your question is: everywhere.

A list of pre-clearance immigration sites can be found here: Preclearence locations. The countries are Canada, Bermuda, Bahamas, Aruba and Ireland.

A short note on the history of pre-clearance can be found on the US Customs and Immigration Website.

The information on Wikipedia on this topic seems to correct.

Greg

The U.S. government has a sneaky pre clearance mechanism in place by way of the PISCES system that has been forced on several countries around the world.

Immigration officers in these countries feed information of all incoming and exiting passengers and take their picture (on arrival and at the time of exit). The information is then sent to a central server in the U.S. where each passengers details are checked against a list of people the U.S. government does not like.

I know of about 10 countries that have Pisces installed.

Care to list which countries have PISCES?

Last time I flew out of Shannon (September 2003) we were definitely precleared. I don't remember for certain on my previous trip (May 2000), but I think we were precleared then, too.

I always thought it was for convenience, but the reason has to be deeper than that. Could it have something to do with the turbulent times in Ireland in the 70s and 80s?

I don't recall "turbulent times" in the Republic of Ireland in the 80s.

The Irish parliament website explains that the Irish airport authority (Aer Rianta) was motivated to have US immigration pre-clearance at Irish airports in order to attract business from airlines which need to make a refueling stop before hopping over the atlantic:
http://historical-debates.oireachtas...606060003.html

"Come to Shannon! Refuel and get your customers through US immigration at Shannon Airport. Forget Heathrow. Shannon rules" - that kind of thing.

If you take a flight with a US carrier from Kabul, Baghdad or Guantanamo, they probably "pre-clear" you.

I don't believe Guantanamo has an airport code. I think most likely you are riding in Cargo bay of military transport plane.

MUGM

Pakistan and Afghanistan certainly are getting money related to PISCES use. It's status I don't know. Is Malta included too?

Edit: At least 15 countries have budgets for PISCES use. As said earlier, it's status I don't know.

And the IATA code for Guantánamo Bay airport is NBW. If you try to request a flight from, say, NYC to NBW at www.United.com, you will get a message, asking you to call reservations to make your booking :D.

I personally find that the benefit to the international traveller outweighs any possible concern about interjurisdictional "intrusiveness". If anything untoward was to happen at US Customs/Immigration -- God forbid -- I'd much prefer to be inconvenienced at YYC (where I would have a number of remedies under Canadian law) than at LAX, where I'd simply be a foreign national.