Taiwan Has Applied for Their Own U.S. Pre-Clearance Facility at Taoyuan Airport

I expect the additional cost of salaries of US CBP officers in Taiwan is negligible in the larger scheme of things. I imagine this is part of a bigger plan to do more pre-clearance globally.

One advantage of doing pre-clearance is that aircraft can go from Taiwan directly to other airports, bypassing overloaded airports like LAX. In a post-COVID world, they can also avoid having people arrive sick. The Asian countries have done much better with Covid, and keeping them separate would be a win.

There is probably also more customs pre-clearance of freight going on, and a lot of air freight goes via passenger aircraft.

> This means the airport needs to designate one part of the terminal (or build a new one) for U.S. departures which is sealed off past the U.S. Immigration checkpoint.

All Canadian international airports are set up this way, and frankly it sucks. The worst part is you need to budget quite a lot of extra travel time before your flight since you need to clear customs before boarding the plane. Less terrible but still annoying, since there's a separate terminal just for US departures, if your party is going to different (US & non-US destinations) you have to split up.

Designating a set of gates for US flights is how Canada does it. Any airline can use those gates, but all US flights must originate from there.

You just go through immigration/customs in Canada (it looks very similar to those in the US). Then once you land they treat it like a domestic flight - so it allows airlines to fly to more airports (not all US airports have customs) and relieve some congestion at customs itself.

> This means the airport needs to designate one part of the terminal (or build a new one) for U.S. departures which is sealed off past the U.S. Immigration checkpoint.

One annoying side effect of this is that you can’t bring most foods onto the gate/flight because you’re technically in the US now. But it’s somehow ok to have local fast food places inside the terminal.

On the topic of sovereignty, it does raise some issues. In Canada’s preclear facilities (we have a lot) there’s basically a no-man’s land where the US is allowed to arrest you, Canada can’t do anything about it and you have few/no US constitutional protections because it’s not US soil.

It might not be Pearl Harbor - but it would be more than there is currently (the American Institute in Taiwan, or AIT - a veritable embassy - and a covert military base in the southern city of Tainan).