A great article in today's New York Times featured the growing popularity of the Global Entry program which allows quick entry through an automated kiosk at selected customs locations at United States airports. The first part of the article featured an account of the New York Times author going through the interview stage of the application process and featured a very funny story of how his fingerprints wouldn't register so he had to wipe his fingers, first, on his forehead and later on the Customs and Border Protection agent's forehead to get moisture enough to register his fingerprints.
But outside of that funny anicdote I was struck by a set of quotes from John Wagner, who is the acting deputy assistant commissioner for field operations for the Customs and Boarder Patrol. He says that the Global Entry program has seen amazing levels of growth in the last couple of months.
"We're seeing applications in record-breaking numbers," said Wagner. "We were doing about 15,000 applications a month for Global Entry, but the last couple of months we've done 50,000."
Even more interesting was the revelation that more agreements with foreign countries are in the works that would allow for expedited customs and immigration processes for US based Global Entry members when they travel to those countries and foreign citizens who are members of their countries program would be able to use Global Entry when they come to the United States.
"We've reached agreements with a lot of different countries on reciprocal arrangements where they'll be able to conduct the vetting and qualify their citizens fro Global Entry, and they'll take the U.S> citizen who has Global Entry and all them to apply for the program they have to enter their country," said Wagner. "For instance, in the Netherlands, Korea, Germany, the U.K., we're in the different phases of doing this."
About 1.5 million citizens are a part of the Global Entry program and in the next five years Wagner has indicated they want to see the overall traffic from Global Entry represent 15-20 percent of all arriving air passengers clearing customs and immigration.
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