TSA Precheck *Audette*

[audette]

Doh! But, I'm over 12 years old.


So, if we have kids, they could go with DH, but I still can't. See, still protecting against the evil Canucks.


(psst - watch out for the geese... they're the sooper-sekrit Canadian spies...)

[audette]

No worries! I figured it was mostly an excuse to post another Canuck GIF.

[calmcosmo]

My husband is AD Navy and I just went to my TSA appointment (for fingerprinting) yesterday. We are stationed in the Los Angeles area so LAX is our hub and the $85 for 5 years (when you consider he didn't have to pay a dime) is worth it to us . Our family is in NYC, Atlanta, and DC. All total headache airports.

Thanks for posting the 12 and under stipulation. We have a 3 and 5 year old and I figured they would let them through, but I hadn't ever seen it in writing.

[VillainV]

H and I flew last week -- I had Pre Check and he didn't. I took the baby through the Pre-Check line and H went through the regular line...it was still totally worth it.

[amaristella]

Hmm. I didn't realize they let little kids go in too. I just got back from a trip and security was the least of my problems. TSA was surprisingly accommodating for me. But then again, all my stuff fit into their x-ray machine. Stroller, car seat, the works. I only wish that SFO wasn't a cluster, that United Airlines had sensitivity training and HNL would maintain their equipment.

[calmcosmo]

I feel like TSA is either totally accommodating, or you are ready to strangle someone by the time you finish your 2 hour security wait.

Long story very short, I had a TSA agent in San Diego tell me that since my Britax Marathon wouldn't fit in their security belt that it couldn't be taken on the plane. Ooookay, lady. Go pound sand. The embarrassing thing was that her misinformation meant that the people behind me in line had to wait while I set her straight about the FAA safety recommendation for car seats on airplanes.

[nsl]

This will be very useful when we travel at Thanksgiving. H can take the kids through the expedited line and get all of their crap sorted out instead of me juggling it all. Thanks!

[audette]

I will admit, I periodically get tossed into the pre-check line anyways. I think it's based on FF status (and the frequent bumps to first class seats on the coach domestic tickets I buy), not sure. I haven't had to deal with TSA a whole lot since moving to Korea - only on the handful of trips I've made back to the US.

I'm thinking of getting the NEXUS pass once we get back to the US. It'll help me both in the US and Canada, and includes pre-check status. It's cheaper than Global Entry, too...


I mean, it's not like the US doesn't already have a full set of my fingerprints, anyways. And they did some type of background check as part of my green card application, too.

[audette]

Aug 7, 2014 2:09:38 GMT -5 killercupcake said:

Aug 6, 2014 23:22:43 GMT -5 audette said:

I will admit, I periodically get tossed into the pre-check line anyways. I think it's based on FF status (and the frequent bumps to first class seats on the coach domestic tickets I buy), not sure. I haven't had to deal with TSA a whole lot since moving to Korea - only on the handful of trips I've made back to the US.

I'm thinking of getting the NEXUS pass once we get back to the US. It'll help me both in the US and Canada, and includes pre-check status. It's cheaper than Global Entry, too...


I mean, it's not like the US doesn't already have a full set of my fingerprints, anyways. And they did some type of background check as part of my green card application, too.

Has it always been public knowledge that you weren't born in the US? I feel like I never knew this. I'll feel extra dumb if we've known this forever. lol

Hah!  I don't holler about it all the time, but I don't really hide it, either.  I've probably mentioned it outright on MM, where I spend more time.

I joke that I am a "stealth foreigner".  Being Canadian, most of my cultural references are similar enough to American ones that I don't stand out as from somewhere else.  I've got an accent that is vaguely Midwestern-ish.  I'm also an Anglophone, so my online presence sounds reasonably American, unless you catch me tossing extra 'u's into a bunch of words (when auto-correct doesn't remove them).  There's not much about me that is obviously not-American, for the most part.  Add in that I am married to a US servicemember, and the usual assumption is that I am American.

So, um, yeah.  I'm Canadian.  I've got a green card, and that was a headache and a half to get (I'm happy to discuss it, although my experiences are a little out of date now).

[audette]

Aug 7, 2014 13:56:34 GMT -5 Stan said:

See?! We have to watch out for them. They pass as Americans! You know who else passes?

They're so nice because they're gaining our trust. Luckily I've seen Red Dawn so I'm prepared. killercupcake, when it goes down with America's hat, you can come stay with me. 

I've always preferred the term "Cool Loft Party" instead of "America's Hat".

Because, well, parties...  (perhaps this is a holdover from my days at university)

[amaristella]

audette, how long does it take to get a green card these days? My dad told me it took him 5 years and he arrived in 1966. (Not from Canada. He came from Hong Kong)

[audette]

Aug 7, 2014 17:16:01 GMT -5 amaristella said:

audette, how long does it take to get a green card these days? My dad told me it took him 5 years and he arrived in 1966. (Not from Canada. He came from Hong Kong)

It depends on how you qualify to apply for one. I was married to a US citizen, so once I applied for my green card, it took about 6-7 months. That was a bit faster than average at the time, I think mostly because I finally dragged DH, in uniform, to an impromptu, unscheduled appointment at a USCIS office (they'd been screwing up my paperwork and giving me the runaround on my attempts to resolve it via their phone system, so I was at a loss on what else I could do... the whole application and processing was one giant cluster).

I remember being pretty stressed out about the processing time - you can't leave the US during the green card processing without first filing and receiving permission from USCIS (which is not a speedy process itself), and my grandmother was doing quite poorly that year.    Thankfully, I did not need to visit Grandma during that time, nor did I need to leave the US for work.

If I was applying via employer-sponsorship, or refugee status, I'm fairly sure it takes quite a bit longer.  Spousal applications are typically the ones that process the fastest.

[amaristella]

Okay. I see. My dad was being sponsored by a member of his extended family. Ideally his dad would have done it but my grandfather wasn't much of a father/husband, to be blunt.

[audette]

Aug 7, 2014 17:53:50 GMT -5 amaristella said:

Okay. I see. My dad was being sponsored by a member of his extended family. Ideally his dad would have done it but my grandfather wasn't much of a father/husband, to be blunt.

That's rough. 

I had to be co-sponsored by a member of my extended family (dad's siblings).  DH was a student the year before we got married, so his tax returns did not show sufficient income to financially sponsor me.  So DH needed a co-sponsor.

If I had ended up on government assistance within a certain amount of time after getting my green card, the costs for that assistance would have been charged to my financial sponsors...  I think it was a time period of a few years, so I'm well past it at this point.

[amaristella]

Aug 7, 2014 18:10:07 GMT -5 audette said:

Aug 7, 2014 17:53:50 GMT -5 amaristella said:

Okay. I see. My dad was being sponsored by a member of his extended family. Ideally his dad would have done it but my grandfather wasn't much of a father/husband, to be blunt.

That's rough. 

I had to be co-sponsored by a member of my extended family (dad's siblings).  DH was a student the year before we got married, so his tax returns did not show sufficient income to financially sponsor me.  So DH needed a co-sponsor.

If I had ended up on government assistance within a certain amount of time after getting my green card, the costs for that assistance would have been charged to my financial sponsors...  I think it was a time period of a few years, so I'm well past it at this point.

That's so interesting. I never knew that. I'm fascinated (often times also saddened) by how immigration works here. I feel so strongly that the immigration system is broken in a similar manner to how the tax code is broken.

[audette]

Aug 7, 2014 19:55:06 GMT -5 amaristella said:

Aug 7, 2014 18:10:07 GMT -5 audette said:

That's rough. 

I had to be co-sponsored by a member of my extended family (dad's siblings).  DH was a student the year before we got married, so his tax returns did not show sufficient income to financially sponsor me.  So DH needed a co-sponsor.

If I had ended up on government assistance within a certain amount of time after getting my green card, the costs for that assistance would have been charged to my financial sponsors...  I think it was a time period of a few years, so I'm well past it at this point.

That's so interesting. I never knew that. I'm fascinated (often times also saddened) by how immigration works here. I feel so strongly that the immigration system is broken in a similar manner to how the tax code is broken.

I suspect there are some categories of immigrants that are not held to this criteria (ie: refugees), but in my circumstance, yeah, I was being sponsored by someone, and that shouldn't be an empty commitment.  It was a bit frustrating that as a new soldier DH wasn't able to qualify to financially sponsor me on his own, but so be it...  They look at the prior three years of tax returns for income levels, and his all indicated student-level income...

It is a decent gauge for me when I hear folks talking about immigration though.  This obligation that comes with sponsorship exists so that immigrants do not become a burden to the taxpayer.  Anytime people automatically assume that immigrants are just around for the freebies, it lets me know that said person really doesn't know much about it.  (honestly, until you deal with it, most folks don't know much about it...)

For example - assuming your Dad was under 35 when he immigrated to the US back in 66... he would have had to sign up for selective service.  Had I been male, I would have had to do so within the last decade - this is still a requirement for permanent residents.

It's also not cheap to file for permanent residency these days.  When I filed, which was some time ago, it cost us about $4-5k for filing fees and costs associated with getting to/thru/from required appointments, etc.  And that was without hiring a lawyer, or needing to get any official documents translated (ie: my birth certificate, marriage certificate, etc).  I also lost work authorization during the processing due to a USCIS screw-up, so I had to take an unpaid leave of absence from work.

So many people seem to assume it's automatic to gain residency/citizenship when you marry an American, and it's just not that simple...