A Good Deal for US Travelers

Thanks for the report!

A young buddy of mine travels internationally with Disney tours, he & I got our GE/Trusted Traveler cards pretty much at the same time. He just came in from South Africa, and I spoke to him about it Tuesday (7/19) night.
His report was similar- in short, re-entry into the USA was quite easy, fast, and smooth.

He, too, is going into Canada soon, and is going to take a rental car up, planning on trying out his NEXUS to see how that goes.
Currently, I am not planning to register a vehicle for NEXUS, and neither is he. He says he's spoken to folks who have crossed US/Canada border in a rental car.

My Interview went smoothly. I arrived at the interview site over 1/2 hour early, and since there was pretty much nobody there, was interviewed, fingerprinted, and photographed immediately. I left ahead of my scheduled interview time slot.

The guy said, and stressed that, If there are lines at the entry point OR at the luggage pick-up, that is NOT where you want to be. DO NOT stand in line.

When I was at the Hamburg Rally I made an appointment to get Canada NEXUS added to my GE/US NEXUS/TSA-Pre card. I paid my $50, was interviewed by Canadian Border Services officers, and am now certified to go both ways (into Canada & back to the US) using the NEXUS ground lanes. Turns out that by doing this, anyone can get GE and TSA-Pre along with NEXUS both ways. That's a saving of $100. Too late for me, but others may benefit.

ricochetrider said:

... My Interview went smoothly. I arrived at the interview site over 1/2 hour early, and since there was pretty much nobody there, was interviewed, fingerprinted, and photographed immediately. I left ahead of my scheduled interview time slot. ...

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My wife and I applied for it online a couple weeks ago. We already have our preliminary approval and have scheduled interviews in a couple weeks. How long after your interview did it take to get your final approval?

Our daughter travels a lot, both domestic & international, and really likes it so at her urging we decided to go for it.

You should get your approval at the end of the interview. The GE becomes part of your passport record. You should get your card in the mail in about 10 days.

ExGMan said:

You should get your approval at the end of the interview. The GE becomes part of your passport record. You should get your card in the mail in about 10 days.

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Yep, they add it to your passport immediately, and I got my card in the mail within a week or a little longer. Guess I could have gone to the website and logged in, and still need to do so to fully activate my card.

I said it before but I live in roughly equal proximity to DC, Baltimore, and Philly- so had multiple choices for my interview site. 3 PM on a Sunday, there was only one other couple in the room, and two officers conducting interviews.

ExGMan said:

When I was at the Hamburg Rally I made an appointment to get Canada NEXUS added to my GE/US NEXUS/TSA-Pre card. I paid my $50, was interviewed by Canadian Border Services officers, and am now certified to go both ways (into Canada & back to the US) using the NEXUS ground lanes. Turns out that by doing this, anyone can get GE and TSA-Pre along with NEXUS both ways. That's a saving of $100. Too late for me, but others may benefit.

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GOOD INTEL right there, John!

ricochetrider said:

GOOD INTEL right there, John!

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Thanks, but I wish I had learned that earlier. The CBP Officer (US) in Canada explained that to me, and told me that when I renew in five years that I could save some money. Oh well.

Anyway, I received my new NEXUS card in the mail today (a week after my interview). I activated it immediately and now will destroy the GLOBAL ENTRY card it replaced. Seems like the CBP system is pretty darn efficient.

ExGMan said:

You should get your approval at the end of the interview. The GE becomes part of your passport record. You should get your card in the mail in about 10 days.

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Excellent! We're going on a couple trips this fall and I was hoping to get it all done so we could use it. Knowing the gov't, I expected a several week wait. Thanks for the info.

I've done some more research. Turns out that in order to get NEXUS (and use it in place of Global Entry) you'd need to be interviewed by both US CBP Officers, and Canadian Border Services officers. This would involve a trip to Canada, it would seem. A friend found the following article which explains this in more detail:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcweb...need-to-know-to-keep-them-valid/#184ddec0478b

last time I flew my ticket had TSA PRE printed on it. I never applied and I never paid a fee.

Will this TSA PRE apply to border crossings?

Rod

Rod - "TSA Pre" only applies to domestic and foreign airplane flights within and departing from the US. Border Crossings are speeded up with "Nexus." It seems that TSA Pre is frequently given out automatically to persons over the age of 70, but it's definitely not automatic.

ragtoplvr said:

last time I flew my ticket had TSA PRE printed on it. I never applied and I never paid a fee.

Will this TSA PRE apply to border crossings?

Rod

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Like you, Rod, I've flown many times where TSA PRE sometimes shows up on my boarding pass - sometimes does not.

Generated enough curiosity that recently, while waiting to pick someone up last month at Mitchell International (Milwaukee), I 'bent the ear' of a TSA supervisor for several minutes.

Turns out that even with the pre-paid screening program, TSA pre-check is still NOT guaranteed. As for why I occasionally see it on my boarding passes (I'm still well south of age 70) ? - he mentioned that the computer randomly selects fliers for this classification to speed up the boarding process. It does not apply to crossing international borders by a method other than flying.

Doesn't exactly inspire confidence in airline security.

When we did our Global Entry 'interview' I asked about the PreCheck given out by the airlines and was told pretty much the same except that they only give it to apparently low risk people, not entirely randomly. I imagine that age is one factor (we're slightly less than 70) but there are others as well. I'd guess that if you had a Muslim sounding name you would not be likely to get it.

After using both the Global Entry and PreCheck, i'm sold. If you travel more than a couple time a year, it's worth the $20/yr ($100/5 yr) and not all that much hassle to go thru the process. We came back from Panama a few weeks ago into Miami and the non-GE line was huge. There were many empty kiosks in the GE are and we were thru in about 10 minutes. It woulda been even quicker but the fingerprint scanners took several tries before they got a good enough scan.

PreCheck is only good on domestic flights but the Global Entry card will supposedly also speed things up when driving into the US from Canada or Mexico. Not like the Nexus thing but quicker than if you don't have it, or so I was told by the guy doing my interview (which is basically an ID check, photo, and fingerprints, not really much of an actual interview).