Tourism is big business, travel is a huge business, and these combined businesses employ a lot of people and bring in tremendous tax revenue and foreign exchange to help offset our balance of payments.
Homeland Security and immigration/customs control is also important to our country. However it appears to me that we have been unwilling to spend adequate resources to make our immigration check points --particularly at airports--friendly. I believe that to a person entering the country that they would feel like they are going into a prison. Long, sterile hallways ending up with very long lines --and signs forbidding the use of cell phones during the long, painful wait in line. It isn't friendly, and it is very intimidating to visitors to our country. I also think it is almost an insult to American citizens to be treated this way when they return from overseas.
All travelers are now paying a steep additional security tax to cover the costs of the additional security. I believe that just a small investment and a few changes would dramatically improve these checkpoints and help improve our face to the rest of the world, and treat our citizens better. For foreign visitors, this is their first "taste" of America -- we should try our best to make it reasonably comfortable!
Here are my suggestions:
1.
Improve the processing speed through immigration--shorten the wait in lines! I understand queuing theory and know how difficult it is to schedule employees and processing stations for a totally random volume of arrival of passengers. However the INS is in the position of knowing far in advance of exactly how many people are going to arrive, and probably even knows how many are US citizens vs foreigners. Passenger manifests are available far in advance. With this knowledge at their fingertips, why doesn't INS schedule adequate staff to handle all stations during the peak periods? At a grocery store, if a queue get's too long, the store may lose business. However since everyone must go through the immigration checkpoint, there is no "cost" to INS to let the lines get unreasonably long. Since everyone must be processed, the long line simply serves as a "buffer" to the processing.
2.
Improve the "ambiance" of the waiting area: The appearance of the hallways and waiting room is really sad! The line is unnecessarily compressed into the "snake" configuration and could be spread out over the whole facility--with lines going back into the hallway. Signage in the area is also limited, doesn't cover all languages. Why not have large TV monitors that display the instructions in every possible written language so arriving passengers can read them while standing in lines?
3.
Allow use of cell phones in line! Yes, I agree it is annoying to have people on cell phones talking while in line. It is also annoying and impolite to be using a phone while being processed. Why not just forbid cell phones beyond some point in the lines--a minute or so prior to being processed? People have just arrived and need to confirm ground transportation, connect with their hosts etc. This is a perfect time for arriving passengers to do that. We should make it convenient, and do whatever is necessary to make sure cell phone reception is good in the waiting area.
