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United States extends its Trusted Traveler program to S. Korea and Singapore
South Korean and Singaporean travelers to the United States will soon get to skip the long immigration lines
Hand over your biometric data and you get to cut the queue. South Koreans and Singaporeans who travel frequently to the United States will soon be able to skip the long lines at immigration and breeze through automated kiosks.
The United States has extended its Trusted Traveler program to include travelers from those countries. The initial arrangement is expected to come into effect in January 2012, according to Yonhap News.
Eligible travelers will be pre-screened and allowed to clear immigration and customs at automated kiosks to cut down on waiting time.
Registration for the bilateral program will involve the collection of biometric information such as fingerprints, though the details are still being worked out on both sides.
South Korean travelers will join fellow travelers from Canada, Mexico, Germany and the Netherlands as part of the U.S. Global Entry scheme.
The Global Entry automated kiosks are sited at 20 major U.S. airports, including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Los Angeles International Airport.
The United States announced the partnership at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Honolulu.
Singaporean and U.S. authorities are working on a similar arrangement, which may take about a year to implement, Channel News Asia reported.
The Trusted Traveler program is part of APEC’s long-term goal to increase the number of travelers in the region and to make "the travel process faster, easier, and more secure for travelers."
Figures from the International Air Transport Association indicate there were 647 million travelers in the Asia-Pacific region in 2009, with the number expected to grow to one billion by 2014.
