12

When you arrive in somewhere like the Norway or France, and go to leave the baggage area, you'll find yourself with a choice of two lanes for customs. One will be Red and labelled something like Goods to declare, the other Green and labelled something like Nothing to declare. If you take the red lane, you'll need to speak to a customs officer. If you take the green one, then you'll walk past customs officers (possibly behind a one-way mirror), but unless they decide to check out, you'll keep walking and won't speak to anyone.

With some other countries, such as the USA, Australia and India, before you can leave the customs area you must queue up for a customs officer. Depending on the country, they might take a form, or they might ask you some questions, but you'll have to wait to interact with them, even if they then direct you to exit without further checks.

For passengers, the first style of customs is much more preferable, as if you've nothing to declare then you can often exit the baggage area through customs in seconds. For passengers, the second style of customs is much less popular, as even with nothing to declare you might end up waiting a long time (30+ minutes not impossible in the USA) to see a customs officer who then waves you through.

Why do some countries opt to make passengers wait, while others are happy to let passengers self-identify if they need checks + use random & targeted checks to catch people not properly declaring?

hippietrail
  • 79,417
  • 54
  • 271
  • 625
Gagravarr
  • 62,696
  • 48
  • 226
  • 449
  • 1
    I couldn't find any suitably licensed photos of European-style Green and Red customs channels, but if someone does have one, please edit my question to add a photo in! – Gagravarr Jul 05 '15 at 21:53
  • 2
    What kind of answer are you expecting? Surely it is a matter of politics and money. Some countries believe the deterrent or theatrical effect of an officer interviewing every entrant is a useful expense. Other countries do not have the resources or the inclination to do this. – Calchas Jul 05 '15 at 22:05
  • 2
    @Calchas Ideally something that goes beyond the 2 paragraphs wikipedia has on the topic and explains a bit more as to why. I largely know why, but based on discussions offline this week I've discovered quite a few travellers don't and are confused by it! – Gagravarr Jul 05 '15 at 22:15
  • If you know why, perhaps you can provide an answer? But really isn't this a political question rather than a travel question? It's a bit like asking "why does the UK send all its customs officers to look under lorries at Dover?" – Calchas Jul 05 '15 at 22:28
  • 2
    @Calchas Pretty sure it isn't customs people looking under the lorries in Dover, but immigration! In Dover, the customs officers are the ones looking at the heavily-loaded rented transit vans... – Gagravarr Jul 05 '15 at 22:32
  • @Gagravarr, the HMRC site says to get useful images from Flickr and attribute them. The only image HMRC carries is their logo. See https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/image-copyright-standards-for-gov-uk – Gayot Fow Jul 05 '15 at 22:51
  • 2
    For what it's worth, Australia does have a "nothing to declare" line at Sydney airport now. You just fill in your form and follow the line, and hand your form to the guy at the door. Not sure who is permitted to use it though. – Mark Henderson Jul 06 '15 at 00:29
  • 1
    @Gagravarr: Even though not suitably licensed, you can at least link to a page that officially and legally depicts the customs channels. – O. R. Mapper Jul 06 '15 at 05:44
  • 1
    Australia takes a tough stance on foreign diseases which can be brought into the country in wooden items, food stuffs, etc. As Australia has no land borders with any other country it is relatively easy to screen everyone who arrives from overseas and almost guarantee that new diseases (with the exception of most human diseases) don't take hold. This is why Australia still doesn't have rabies. My parents usually put something small and "safe" (e.g. unopened, commercially bought, packaged food) in their luggage and then declare it to skip the "nothing to declare" line which is always longer. – CJ Dennis Jul 06 '15 at 06:55
  • 1
    India falls in the first category, not second. You can walk out of the baggage area from the green channel. – Prateek Jul 06 '15 at 06:57
  • For what it's worth, I actually don't remember talking to a customs agent when I entered the U.S. at Detroit last month. At LAX 2 years ago and SFO one year, ago, though, I did have to wait in a long line just to hand a guy a form, as described in the question. It's also possible that I just entirely forgot about having spoken to a customs agent at DTW after 24+ hours of flying, though. – reirab Jul 06 '15 at 07:12
  • 1
    @Prateek I've only ever entered India through Bangalore, but there I've been required to queue up and hand my form to a customs officer ever time, there was no green channel option available. Maybe it varies by airport? – Gagravarr Jul 06 '15 at 07:59
  • It might be useful to mention the Schengen area; within that area border controls are much reduced. So it's not just arriving in France, but also the country you left which explains the lack of border controls. – MSalters Jul 06 '15 at 08:55
  • 1
    @MSalters: This question is not about border controls (passport, visa, ...), but about customs. While within Schengen countries, airports usually do not guide you through any passport control booths, they still very much do guide you through the customs gates (nothing to declare/goods to declare) as described in the question. – O. R. Mapper Jul 06 '15 at 11:22
  • @O.R.Mapper: I was actually thinking of trains, having just travelled to Gare du Nord where the French have to differentiate between Eurostar (to London, outside Schengen) and Thalys (inside Schengen). There are no more checks to board Thalys than there are on domestic trains. I think the customs check on some airports is mostly because those airports get their pax flows mixed up, on small airports with only Schengen flights I think they don't bother you with customs. – MSalters Jul 06 '15 at 11:30
  • @MSalters: That's true concerning train stations. However, I have regularly seen customs officers be around at the exit of the baggage claim on German airports when arriving back from within the Schengen zone, and once, baggage claim was even seriously delayed (> 40min) because our intra-Schengen flight had been randomly chosen for a thorough customs check (presumeably, all suitcases were scanned before being handed out). – O. R. Mapper Jul 06 '15 at 11:33
  • @MSalters It's not really Schengen, it's just British insularity. You have trains leaving for Russia through Belarus on regular platforms in France. And before Thalys or Schengen, trains to Belgium, Switzerland, etc. were cleared while crossing the border or at the destination. Only the UK has the luxury to rely on advance border controls and a full airport-like check-in procedure almost everywhere (including ferry crossings now). – Relaxed Sep 24 '15 at 16:40
  • 1
    @CJDennis I think it is more about invasive species that they want to keep out. That makes a lot of sense, because Australia was isolated in terms of evolution for a very long time, and there are lots of animals and insects that would love to eat native species. Bringing a small insect in can be totally invisible, like in pores of a piece of wood. Read about what small wasp species can do if you like real life horror. – Volker Siegel Sep 02 '19 at 14:08

2 Answers2

10

My informal observations suggest that France unilaterally scaled down checks on its land borders a long time ago, both for immigrations and customs purposes (including on the border with Switzerland, even before it joined the Schengen area or formally associated with the EU). International airports and “external” borders are still actively policed for immigration purposes but not as much for customs. So in general, it's clearly not something France is ready to spend heavily on.

Having lived for a long time in a border town, I know a few customs officers. That's anecdotal of course but it seems that the received wisdom among them is that meaningful catches only come from informants/tips/investigations. They still do some random searches and quite a bit of profiling to deter small time fraud and because they have to but, rightly or wrongly, it would readily explain why systematic checks are not considered to be an effective use of resources. The context is a bit different but the same rationale would apply to red/green channels in airports (I don't know anybody working for the customs at an airport, incidentally).

As to why other countries do not follow the same policy, I can only surmise that it comes down to the context (smaller border/fewer border checkpoints relative to the size of the country), objectives (ensuring the effectivity of the law as a matter of principle rather than simply recovering as much contraband/duty as possible) or perhaps politics (e.g. being seen as tough on everything border related is more important than convenience to travellers or saving money).

Relaxed
  • 106,459
  • 10
  • 231
  • 385
  • 3
    +1 I agree with the part about working from tips. Here HMRC also use a print-out showing the number of pieces of luggage each passenger checked and how long they were away. – Gayot Fow Jul 06 '15 at 02:14
  • 3
    Just as a slight nitpick, I'd guess it has to do more with the frequency of border crossing than the size of the borders. For example, due primarily to the distances involved, it's much less common for the average person in the U.S. to travel to another country than for someone in Europe. By distance, traveling to another country in Europe is comparable to traveling to a different state within the U.S. My guess would be that a large majority of U.S. citizens have never crossed a land border of the U.S., despite the U.S. having around twelve thousand kilometers of them. – reirab Jul 06 '15 at 07:33
  • @reirab That's precisely what I mean by "relative to the size of the country". And there are some cross-border towns which could generate frequent crossings for the local population, very much like in Geneva, Basel, Lille or Strasbourg. – Relaxed Jul 06 '15 at 08:24
  • 1
    "ensuring the effectivity of the law as a matter of principle" or maybe they have more to lose? Australia is a island that's trying very hard to keep an isolated biosphere... and a breach can cost a fortune. – NPSF3000 Jul 06 '15 at 08:58
4

It also depends on what you are trying to keep out, specifically only the really dumb criminals get caught in customs. but there are some things that If you want them kept out require more diligence, but when my mother flew back to the United States from Belize They were checking all bags for meat. (There was a slight hiccup here as my mother had been caught in a hurricane which although it had not damaged her canned goods, it did remove the labels.) On another flight this time coming back from England, the concern was mad cow, and my mother had been jogging through the countryside. They confiscated the plastic bag she had been carrying her shoes in to keep her suitcase clean, scrubbed her shoes with some obnoxious chemical, and gave her a new clean bag. I am not sure what I think about the meat from Belize, but I appreciate the thing with the shoes.

hildred
  • 241
  • 1
  • 2
  • 7