SkruDe
Difficulty:  | Review Topic: Port of Entry Review
My fiance and I traveled back to the States on August 15th, 2017. We took a non-stop flight from Bogota, Colombia to Newark, New Jersey. We traveled with my fiances cat and dog (cat was a carry-on and dog was in cargo hold). We were both nervous about how our POE experience would go since we have read many awful tales of people waiting hours and having issues at POE's. And to add more fuel to the fire, we were traveling with the added stress of a cat and dog.
We flew to Newark on the red eye flight. We arrived at 5:30am in the morning. At this time in the morning, the airport was not very busy. This was by our design, to get their early to avoid the madness. We got off the plane and walked to the immigration check-in area. We were directed to a line by an employee. They wanted both my fiance (immigrant) and me (U.S. Citizen) to go together to the immigrant lines. The lines at this time in the morning were short and in under 15 minutes we were at the immigration officers desk. I handed over the K1 Visa Packet to the officer. He then proceeded to check me in first, since I was easy as a U.S. citizen. Then he opened the packet and checked-in my fiance. He took her fingerprints, her photo, and then told her she will need to go to another area to finish up her paperwork and processing. I was not allowed to go with her. The immigration officer told me to go ahead to the baggage claim area, and that my fiance will be there shortly. He said she'll be coming out from behind the glass wall area by the international baggage claim.
I proceeded down to the international baggage claim area and next to the baggage claim area were glass walls that you can see immigration processing happening at. That is were my fiance was. So the location was nicely situated. I waited by the doors of the glass wall, waiting for her to come out. I saw her go to a desk (where later she told me that they asked her basic questions about her stay, intent, and me. Also talked to her about Domestic Abuse) and then she walked out. It was very easy.
After she walked out of the immigration area we went to pick up our baggage at the carousal. Then proceeded to walk over to the customs check point. Because we were traveling with a cat and dog, they made us go to another line for further evaluation. We placed all our luggage through a scanner and checked in our cat (dog was handled by the cargo team. Our cat was a carry-on and with us at this point). This process again was very easy and quick. After we scanned all our bags they let us go. We didn't even have to take the cat out of the carrier.
We walked out and into the regular baggage claim area. That is it, we were done. Now we just needed to go pick up our dog at the pet pick-up area (more on this below).
Overall a very easy experience. All the immigration officers were pleasant and professional. We were both very happy we chose Newark as our POE destination and we would recommend it to others. BUT... keep in mind, we arrived at 5:30am in the morning. The airport may be very different mid-day. So I suggest you try to arrive as early as possible.
BONUS Review: As mentioned above, we traveled with our pets. We had a dog who traveled via Cargo in the airplane with us. Newark is a UNITED Airlines hub. The UNITED PetSafe program at Newark treated our dog very well from what we could tell. There was a 2-hour delay though before they let us pick up our dog. The reasoning was that the shippers in Bogota did not send the custom forms in English. So it caused a delay. We were worried something was wrong with our dog, so it was a bit nerve racking. Also, the delay kind of irked us a little bit because we were driving from Newark to Cleveland and this delayed our intended drive time. But the safety and well-being of our dog came first. They finally released our dog and he was in good shape. So we all packed into the van I rented at the airport (again another very easy process) and we drove back home to Cleveland.
Final Review: GREAT experience. Very easy. Very satisfied. Would recommend.
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Port of Entry Member Review #16490
Entry Date: 2017-08-15