Us Landing Card
Whenever you enter the US, you are required to fill out Form 6059B, which asks for your personal details and whether or not you're bringing in any restricted goods. Whenever you are entering the UK, you are required to fill out a landing card and passengers entering Canada fill out an E311 Declaration Card. As far as I can tell the immigration officers usually completely ignore whatever details you wrote in those forms and simply scan your passport to enter your details into their computer. It therefore looks like a complete waste of time, as the majority of passengers have no goods to declare anyway and therefore the immigration forms get thrown away right after you get your passport stamp.
So what's the point of these forms/declarations? Why require absolutely everyone to fill them out? As a bonus question explain why car passengers are spared from this obligation and are instead asked verbally if they have something to declare.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY U.S. Customs and Border Protection OMB No. 165l-01I I #'iror8 18 rr'lrrrrrrrl I-94 ArrivaUDeparture Record - Instructions This form must be completed by all persons except U.S. Citizens, returning resident aliens. Aliens with immilrant visas, arid Canadian eitizens visiting or in traniit. Before the plane lands, the flight attendants will be passing out the 'Landing Cards' from Canada Customs. I am Canadian but I only plan to stay in Canada for two months so I think Customs sees me only as a visitor. Whether you are a visitor to the United States or a U.S. Citizen arriving in the. Documents) will need to complete CBP Form I-94 Arrival/Departure Record.
2 Answers
My understanding is that the forms primarily exist for two purposes:
- For tracking. This is increasingly obsolete as records become digital, and while bureaucracy moves slowly, some of these forms are disappearing: eg. the US paper I-94 is long gone and Australia no longer has departure cards.
- For making it easier to charge you with crime. For example, if you bring in drugs and state on your declaration form that you're not bringing in drugs, that's two offences right there, and it's apparently often easier to charge you with the bureaucratic violation than the actual contraband. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937)
I do agree that the forms often seem pointless in practice: yesterday I dutifully declared I was bringing a meat product to the US, twice at that (Customs paper form and ESTA machine), and nobody even bothered to ask me what it was (jerky), much less inspect it...
In the UK, there are situations where the landing card is recorded - a so-called coded landing. This happens when, above the date stamp, you get a 'custom' rectangular stamp with the landing card number on it rather than the plain-text 6-month stamp.
This happens when there's been suspicions about a person they nevertheless chose to land, and always happens when a visa national is admitted for visa-free landside transit (until 23:59 the next day) as well as when a non-visa national is admitted for visa-free study for up to 6 months (short-term study).
Us Landing Card Form
As for the US, either the customs form or the APC/Global entry receipt has to be collected by the customs officer (for what purpose, I do not know) - hence the need to fill that one out.
