International travel may be challenging, especially when anonymous travel with a new identity is used.
It can be perplexing even for someone who has visited several countries using a new identity and anonymous travel.
Border Control
A country’s border controls are the procedures it takes to monitor and manage its boundaries. Yes, you are still crossing a country’s boundaries when you fly in. People, animals, and things are moving into and out of a nation through border restrictions making anonymous travel a challenge.
Immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people into a destination country where they are not natives or citizens to live or reside there, mainly as permanent residents or naturalized citizens, or take up a job as migrant workers or temporarily as foreign workers. Immigration authorities often check for proper documentation, confirm that a person is authorized to enter the country, seize persons wanted on domestic or international arrest warrants, and prevent people deemed hazardous to the country from entering the country. Immigration by its nature makes anonymous travel both difficult and challenging, but it can be overcome by remaining calm.
Customs
Customs is a government entity or agency in charge of collecting taxes and regulating the movement of commodities into and out of a country, including animals, transportation, personal belongings, and dangerous materials. Customs by their nature make anonymous travel difficult. Each country’s customs body implements its import and export laws and regulations. Some goods may be limited or prohibited in their import or export. Government agreements and international legislation are used in most nations to establish customs. A tariff or levy on goods importation or exportation is known as a customs duty. Commercial items that have not yet cleared customs are stored in a bonded store until they are processed. Customs at airports serve as a point of no return for all travelers. After they have passed through customs, they cannot return.
Airport security refers to the procedures and methods used to protect passengers, employees, and planes using airports from danger, criminality, and other hazards. Airport security works to keep threats and possibly dangerous situations out of the country. If airport security is successful, the likelihood of any harmful condition, illegal products, or threats entering an aircraft, country, or airport is considerably minimized. Airport security serves several purposes: To safeguard the airport and the country from any potentially dangerous incidents, to reassure the traveling using public transportation are safe, and to safeguard the government and its citizens.
TSA (Transportation Security Administration)
The TSA is a United States government agency that screens passengers to ensure safe travel on all kinds of transportation, particularly airlines. TSA officials are stationed at all U.S. airports, where travelers must pass through a series of security checks on their route to the gate, including bag searches and body scanners.
TSA Precheck
TSA Precheck expedites the security process for passengers. Removing your shoes, beverages, or laptop computers from your luggage is unnecessary. TSA Precheck members usually queue in a separate security line shorter than the regular lines. Most airports and airlines accept TSA Precheck, but it is not always available for international travelers or those leaving an international airport terminal. See the TSA website for a complete list of locations that accept TSA Precheck and information on how to apply.
Global Entry
Global Entry allows visitors to bypass long lines at U.S. Customs by using computerized kiosks where they can present their passports and proceed directly to baggage claim. Photo and fingerprint recognition are used at the booths. On the CBP website, you can schedule an application appointment. Similar to Global Entry, a few additional programs allow passengers to clear US Customs more swiftly. There are two examples of NEXUS, a paid pre-screen program, and will enable, a program that will allow faster passage in specific lanes.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AN AIRPORT ARRIVAL
For domestic flights, arrive 1.5-4 hours early (Traveling between the U.S States or between European Countries)
International planes should arrive 4 hours prior.
BEST WAYS TO GET RID OF CUSTOMS
Keep your passport with you at all times. Remove any hats, sunglasses, or anything hiding your face and put them away or turn them off. They may have to open the gifts, so don’t gift wrap them.
CUSTOMS QUESTIONS THAT ARE MOST OFTEN ASKED
What are you hoping to accomplish with your journey?
What is your time frame for your visit?
What hotel are you going to book?
What profession do you have?
Do you need to make a statement? (Examples include fruits and vegetables.)
Do you have any healthcare coverage?
What’s the total amount of money you have on you?
Where are you going to spend your time?
Are you a regular visitor to this location?
From where will you be arriving?
Do you intend to travel by yourself?
There are nine things you should never say to a customs official if you want anonymous travel.
You know it will be a good time when you’re in a room with no windows or clocks. They’re both a no-brainer when it comes to massages or blackjack tables. When they’re not having a good time, you’ll know. When you’re in a customs detention room, and one guy rummages through your belongings while another interrogates you like it’s the first season of SVU. Detention in the airport basement is ideal for sabotaging any vacation’s start.
We spoke with a few customs agents (and a few unfortunate inmates) to find out what you should never say when getting your passport stamped.
“I do have agricultural stuff, certainly,” says the narrator. If you remember you have leftover illegal drugs in your bag while waiting in line at customs, throw it out like a vial of drugs. Leave it on the tarmac if there isn’t a garbage bin available. Fruits and vegetables are not permitted in most nations, and if you have any, you will be detained rather than imprisoned. Also, don’t lie about it because “That time I went to jail for attempting to smuggle a persimmon” is a ridiculous narrative.
“I’m undecided about where I’m going to remain.”
MAKE SOMETHING UP, even if your plans include sleeping on a warm steam grate or on the couch of someone you met on Tinder. It’s not like customs would chase you down and put handcuffs on you as soon as you pass the Hilton where you claimed to be staying. Leave it at that. Give them the name of a local hotel. You may even give them vague directions like “Behind glass hut, second left,” and they’ll wave you to some less-populated areas that don’t bother with street names. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.”
When his mother tosses him out, eats all your food, and somehow sets your DVR to record every single episode of “Storage Wars,” you have that permanently unemployed cousin who asks if he can “crash” for a bit. If you say you don’t know when you’ll be leaving, that’s pretty much who other countries presume you are. Furthermore, your visa has an expiration date, and if you don’t know when it expires, it will raise some red lights.
“Do you want to do business or go on vacation?”
I might run with someone I used to work with while there. So, I suppose that qualifies as work… However, they are not attempting to recruit me for a position in that location. I’m not even going to try to come over and work for a few more minutes… So, thank you for your interest. I’d say I’m enjoying myself “,
Who do you think rambles the most?
Joe Biden is President of the United States of America. However, some guilty individuals nervously conceal that they are transporting several pounds of illegal saffron. Keep your responses as brief and to the point as possible, and customs will have no excuse to say the dreaded “Please step over here” phrase and there goes your chance at anonymous travel.
“I’m employed in a variety of capacities.”
You can work as a dentist, welder, dog trainer, and Mezcal concierge while finding time to travel internationally. Customs will not follow you to your hotel, and they will not check your Facebook to see if you have more employees than you stated. Just go with the one that doesn’t sound like it includes transporting black tar heroin. Because having six jobs implies, you’ll have to undertake many odd jobs to make ends meet. “You give me the creeps.”
Remember when you were in high school and sweetly tried to ask out that lady in your chemistry class, you couldn’t construct a sentence, apologized for being nervous, and she turned you down in front of your entire 4th-period lab? THAT’S when you should’ve learned not to tell anyone if they were making you nervous. Even if the prospect of being held is only marginally more terrifying than high school disgrace, confessing your jitters will only make a customs agent wonder why and could expose your new identity.
“Ok, I wasn’t only in China,” says the narrator.
It asked you what nations you’d visited when you pestered eight different folks to borrow a pen and fill out that customs declaration form on the plane. That doesn’t rule out that customs will question you again to ensure you aren’t “forgetting” about your jog to Bangkok. Congratulations if you found any irregularities and admitted them to businesses. You just told customs a lie. For the next month, don’t expect to go anyplace.
Any obnoxiousness.
Even if your trip was delayed, you were seated on the plane between an obese man and a screaming baby, there was no food, and the only on-demand movie was “Gigli.” “don’t take your rage out on the customs officers. They have absolute power, and while most people don’t misuse it, being nasty or angry with them is a sure-fire way to waste a lot of time at the airport. Just be polite, concise, and honest, and reserve your airline fury for the person who misplaced your luggage.
“I’m planning to marry here.”
Unless you’re entering on a fiancée visa, don’t tell customs that things worked out with your summer camp girlfriend in Canada. You’re on your way to living happily ever after in Saskatchewan. Get a fiancée visa, or even better. When you enter the country on a tourist visa and tell customs you’re coming here to marry someone for paperwork, you’re effectively stating, “I’m coming here to marry someone for paperwork.” Which will almost certainly not be the end of your paperwork or the start of a day spent in a room with no windows or clocks.
