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This isn't all that unusual either. From what I can tell from my travel, this is more of a European thing then anywhere else, as I have not been able to transit without clearing local customs in Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Seoul or Bangkok. Call it an accident of geography - most travel in the EU is technically international, because the EU is a loose confederation at best rather than a federal government.

It's actually an artifact of the Schengen region not the EU itself. EU has freedom of movement rules, but Schengen provides for universal visa and lack of border controls. The UK (which is soon to be outside of the EU) has never been part of Schengen, but has and will continue to be part of the Common Travel Area which is the same thing but for UK and Irish Republic.

Shanghai should have a custom free transit section now, at least for the last five years. I’ve transferred in Tokyo (from Beijing to the USA) and Hong Kong (from Beijing to Bali) often without clearing customs, so I’m not really sure what is going on with your situation there.

Hong Kong and Singapore, as examples, are huge transfer airports where many passengers never clear customs.

I was able to transit Seoul (South Korea) without clearing customs. This was in 1984, though, so things may have changed...

They haven't (as of 2018 at least).

I've transited Hong Kong, Tokyo (NRT), Singapore, and Seoul (both SEL and ICN) without going through immigration or customs. All of them have a security check. They look at your passport and boarding pass, and x-ray carry-ons. But it's not full immigration.

A few more recent airports have been built to make this change possible should policy ever shift. IAH was specifically designed to allow future sterile transits without major construction.

The US used to have a program called “ITI” which was suspended in 2003. I don’t know exactly how it worked logistically. Travelers were supposed to stay in a certain area of the airport. I believe Miami had a separate secure transit area—was the area you are referring to at IAH in use until 2003?

Other airports may have relied on other measures to make sure transit passengers didn’t proceed into the US.

(There was also a related transit without visa program that allowed visa-free transit within the US, using multiple airports.)

I traveled through the US on a connecting flight in 1999 without a visa and it was possible. "Transit without visa" was a thing.

Did you have to stay in a designated transit area of the airport, or were you able to roam about more freely?

(It was too much trouble to try to find the old pre-2003 regulations.)

Designated transit area, of course. Don't know when this stopped being the case though.

Air New Zealand used to do this for their Auckland-London flights at LAX. Now they have some modified thing where you have to go through immigration, but your bags still go through. It's byzantine but better than other US airports. This matches my recollection: http://abroad.theaureview.com/flights/what-its-like-to-trans...

On the other hand, we fly Air NZ to Sydney from LAX via AKL all the time. Transiting through Auckland is pretty easy (just an additional hand-baggage check as you exit the airplane into the sterile int'l zone), and getting better since the airport is finally getting expanded. Beforehand the airport was impossibly cramped.

I did this journey LHR to AKL and back again via LAX in 2005. It was a pretty miserable affair and included being fingerprinted and retina scanned at LAX, both times. The whole experience felt authoritarian and sketchy and a few gears up from the rather pleasant visit I'd had in Boston in 2002 (sans fingerprinting and eyeball scanning despite it being only a year since 9/11).

I doubt I'll ever visit the US again.

Both IAH and MIA allow this sort of transit on international-to-international connections, but only if flying United (through IAH) or American (through MIA). Bags don't have to be collected but passengers still have to clear immigration and hold the appropriate visa or authorization.

It makes sense to see that at IAH. United sees a lot of traffic towards Latin America from there so opening that up makes Europe-to-Latin America itineraries feasible. The same might be true at other hubs in the southern US, say DFW, ATL, MIA. (Although I live in Atlanta and ATL doesn't do a huge amount of international business - it's built on being a connecting point for domestic flights.)

Perhaps then atleast the airports & terminals where these segreations are in place should be allowed to do 'sterile transfers', and new constructions out to be designed with that in mind.

Otherwise asking someone to get a US visa for mere transfer in an airport (as I understand getting a transit visa is as difficult as other types of US visa required to actually visit US, involving the same lengthy process, with personal interviews at the US Consulates, which in big countries like China, India, Russia could be located at the other end of their country), often to the same aircraft is very onerous.

At the very least the transit visa should be a made a visa-on-arrival with a small fees. I sincerely wonder why the US want to hassle people who don't want to, don't intend to set foot on US soil, but merely want to change planes in there.

some of your points are fair, but I think you're making excuses. The "Even with Canadian flights it is normal to clear US customs and immigration..." is trying to justify.. something.. but what it's really describing is a policy by which the US is forcing its immigration enforcement on to foreign countries. This is a new thing.

I haven't travelled enough to say; I've noticed the 'sterile' zones in particular in Heathrow but of course they have a vast array of international flights, and their status as a non-Schengen country means virtually every transit will be an international one (in contrast to your fair point about the US being a large country with primarily domestic flights).

On a recent trip to South America, I was reminded of how few countries have sterile zones. I made the mistake of booking through Mexico, thinking it would save time, but not realizing I'd have to clear customs going through the country each way. I also took a number of flights such as Argentina -> Peru -> Chile requiring I clear customs on my connection, as well as going through exit and entrance immigration in each (another contrast to the US, which has no exit immigration at all).

I think I got something like 16 passport stamps in 3 weeks.

The motivation for US preclearance at Canadian airports is not "forcing its immigration enforcement on to foreign countries". It's that there are a handful of major airports in Canada, and loads more in the US, many of which did not have immigration facilities in the 1950s and 60s when preclearance started. Even today LGA and DCA don't have immigration facilities.

I learned something new today; you are correct that Canadian preclearance predates 9/11 hysteria, however it is an expanding program that I believe fits my characterization when applied to other countries.

https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/ports-entry/operations/p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_precleara...

>> policy by which the US is forcing its immigration enforcement on to foreign countries. This is a new thing.

Speaking as a Canadian who regularly travels into the US, Canadians much prefer to clear US customs while still in Canada. It simplifies things and means that, should something go wrong, you are still in Canada rather than trapped in the US without a visa.

Interesting. Before you said that, I was thinking about it from the US government's perspective.

And I think that it is basically the flip side of your description. I think with such procedures the US is trying to reduce the number of people who are "trapped in the US without a visa" simply because the US government, by law, becomes responsible for managing, tracking, processing, administering, and, yes, potentially initiating removal proceedings for, such persons.