How do they know you left the country?

[vw_rutgers]

As a green card holder, when you leave the country at the airport, since there is no I-94 card any more, they collect nothing from you, so how can they know when you leave the country? When you re-enter at POE, they just stamp the date on the passport. So how to determine how long you have been out of the country for them?

[vw_rutgers]

That is not true. The airline staff did not swipe anything. They just asked if I had the green card. That is all.

[leroythelion]

Originally posted by ****
Well, they are supposed to do that.
If they didn't in your particular case, that doesn't mean that my statement isn't true. They usually swipe either the GC or the passport.
And, of course, these things have changed after 9/11.
The airlines have to give the passenger manifest to the INS, and the easiest way to create the manifest is to have the data entered automatically, by swiping GC or passport.

****, the system is not that foolproof. You could conceivably drive to Toronto, catch to a flight to wherever, stay there for 2 years, fly back to Canada and enter by car again. You have a 50:50 chance of getting a Customs officer, instead of INS, who care more about *what* is in your car instead of *who* is in your car. Flash him your Green Card and he'll wave you through. No-one, in this case, will have any idea how long you were out of the country. This is why, 5 years ago, the US gov't wanted to institute a departure record for *all* people at land crossings. It was shot down by border town representatives but is probably not a bad idea.

BTW, your GC is not normally swiped at land crossings by any side.


Brian

[baikal3]

I doubt that at present there is a functioning effective system for recording and tracking the entry/exit data of GC holders, and it seems unlikely to me that INS is really trying to keep track of this information at the moment (though they might in the future).
INS is still fundamentally a paper-based buraucracy and lacks the logistics for dealing with such data electonically. For example, even if they do scan someone's green card, this information then has to be transmitted and stored electronically and then processed by appropriate computer programs at INS. As far as I know such programs do not exist yet, not even for non-immigrant aliens, who are more of a worry for the government now.
In fact, that's what all the hubbab in Congress about creating a computerized entry/exit tracking system is all about. Of course, a nonimmigrant is supposed to surrender an I-94 when leaving the country but INS currently lacks the resources to process all this data. I watched a portion of Congressional hearings about this on C-Span and the INS guys said that most of surrendered I-94 cards just sit in some warehouses forever and are never looked at. Apparently it is tons of paper... The same goes for passanger manifests. For now it is just too much paper for INS to handle, they'd have to get seriously computerized before this info can be effectively tracked.

I don't know about scanning green cards and passports (most countries' passports are probably aren't scannable, are they?). On my most recent trip to Canada a month ago at the check-in in Chicago O'Hare they did not ask me for either my GC or even a passport GC stamp, they only checked the validity of my passport.

It seems more likely to me that even if they do scan a GC, this is done for quick authentication purposes
rather than to record and store data.