DM Mahoney / Medill News
By Donna Mahoney WASHINGTON – Before Global Entry kiosks appeared in airports across the country in 2008, travelers looking to come back into the U.S. waited in line for Customs to check their passports and paperwork to ensure that they were legit. And depending on the airport and the flights for that day, some people will wait for hours to get through the airport. Now, if you are a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident, you may have the option of not waiting in line. Instead, pay a $100 application fee, pass an extensive background check, get fingerprinted and pass an in-person interview with U.S. Customs & Border Protection and walk past the lines of people and over to a Global Entry kiosk. (The kiosks are not available in all airports; airports need to purchase the kiosks and not all airports see the benefit.)
DM Mahoney / Medill News
Just scan in your passport or U.S. permanent residence card and place your fingertips on the scanner on the kiosk. The new software identifies that you are indeed you by matching your fingertips (no ink is used here) to fingerprint data stored in the kiosk. In an interview at the Ronald Reagan Building, U.S. Customs & Border Protection Acting commissioner, Robert Wagner, said that the program sees over fifty thousand applications a month coming to the Global Entry application office. And the U.S. government wants to bring this service to more international travelers from other countries. International visitors bring revenue to the nation Since first introduced six years ago, Global Entry has allowed over 1 million travelers to enter the U.S. In 2013, a record 70 million international visitors traveled to the U.S., a 5 percent increase over the previous year. While in the states, they spent a record $180.7 billion. The government’s goal is to have 100 million international visitors by 2020, which would hypothetically generate $250 billion in spending. The targeted visitors are coming from the four emerging economies with the most visas: Mexico, China, Brazil and India. For many visitors, the wait to go through Customs without using Global Entry can take hours. Think of all of the actions a visitor has to take: walking to the booth, getting their papers out, having their ID checked in the system. When multiplied by 20,000 people a day, that’s what causes such delays. Kiosks minimize the tasks that the officer has to do. Automation eliminates about 40 percent of the time, according to Carey Davis, Acting executive director of Admissibility and Passenger Programs. The program is slowly allowing other travelers from other countries, the option to use Global Entry. Customs has brokered arrangements with Canada, Mexico, The Netherlands, Panama, and South Korea to agree to do their own separate background checks, in addition to the background checks performed by CBP, according to Wagner. The software has not been made available yet to all international travelers because CBP is being extremely cautious to allow only low-risk travelers to use the kiosk. (A low-risk traveler would be someone who can prove past compliance with laws and regulations, among other criteria.) And Congress is getting impatient. Officials want more travelers entering through the kiosks. In a recent Senate committee hearing titled “The State of the U.S. Travel and Tourism Industry,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., expressed his disappointment in the progress of the Global Entry program at Miami’s International Airport in bringing international travelers through via kiosks. During the hearing, Rubio expressed his frustration to Wagner about the fact that 70 new kiosks in the Miami International Airport (the second busiest international gateway to the U.S.), only work for U.S. citizens as they do not have the updated software that lets travelers enrolled in the Global Entry Program that are from other countries, use them. Rubio (to Wagner): “Can you work with us, or can you pledge with us, we’re going to get that software in there so that these kiosks that they’ve paid for will actually work for the cause of their waits?” Wagner’s response was that they did not know the timeline but he assured Rubio that they would be working on it in the upcoming weeks.
