Why do some airports do immigration check at arrival gate before passengers go through the actual immigration?

8/6/2022 9:47:59 PM

In some airports, travellers in transit with certain citizenships are handled differently: they will be escorted to a secure area, where they will be held until their connecting flight departs (to which they will be escorted as well).

There is a strong link between citizenships which are required to have an airside transit visa and such procedures.

The actual reason for this (both ATV and the escorting) is unclear, but is usually related to people pretending to connect but actually attempting to enter the country at the connection airport.

It may be:

  • because there have been known security holes allowing people to bypass the normal border checks somewhere (possibly once they are in the waiting area for their connecting flight —- lots of shops, restaurants and services, so opportunities for well organised networks to get someone out)
  • Because once they are in the airport they will go to passport control and try to claim asylum. Not sure whether that can actually work nor how escorting them will avoid the issue, but I’ve seen that mentioned

For this case, in my experience the checks are cursory for people with a “good” passport: just vaguely wave your passport and you’ll be let through.

Another case is when temporary internal Schengen checks are reintroduced and for operational reasons they can’t route you through normal passport control (though this does not quite match the case in the question). In that case I’ve seen officers with special mobile passport check terminals at the gate, checking everybody like they would at a normal passport control booth.

8/6/2022 2:10:06 PM

Some countries like Thailand do this to determine which queue you should go in (visa-holder/visa-exempt, visa on arrival), as different passports can have different qualifications, and may need to go to different parts of the airport as a result.

8/4/2022 3:31:03 PM

A guess: sometimes travelers will destroy their own travel documents before reaching passport control, for a variety of reasons that the destination government doesn’t approve of. Doing a check before the traveler has access to a toilet, garbage can, etc, makes this more difficult.

8/4/2022 3:27:53 PM

In Frankfurt, there will be some passengers who are not expected to reach passport control at all because, having arrived from a non-Schengen airport, they are on their way to another non-Schengen airport. Some of these passengers are required to have an airport transit visa. The officers may be verifying these visas as a form of audit to confirm that the airline has processed and reported these passengers correctly.

Other reasons for such checks could include suspicions about specific individuals on the flight (whether they are wanted for a crime or merely suspected of an immigration violation), or concerns that some might do something undesirable between arrival and passport control (or, if applicable, between arrival and international departure without needing to go through passport control). For example, there could be some passport-swapping scheme.

Of course, the scrutiny may also have nothing to do with immigration matters but could be looking for smugglers (before they have time to pass their goods on to someone else or hide them somewhere in the airport) by checking for people who become nervous under questioning.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

Search Posts

Latest posts

Popular posts