Its worth pointing out that the US is literally the only country in the world that I have visited, in my recollection, that does not have passport control upon exiting the country.

you would have passport control if you exited the country through some other non conventional ways.

The airlines are giving out all the information, that's why there is no need to do an exit passport control.

> you would have passport control if you exited the country through some other non conventional ways.

From the US? I can't think of any outgoing passport control at all; not by land in a private vehicle, nor by boat.

Canada also doesn't have any sort of outgoing passport control that I've seen. Leaving on a flight, it's possible that the airlines pass your info on to CBSA but there are no controls when leaving by car (you literally drive into the US, then see the CBP) or by boat (you have to report on your way in, but not out, see https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/pb-pp-eng.html ).

The UK does not check passports outbound at airports either

There's no exit passport control in Canada either, at least when going to the US (ground or air).

I never really considered this, but I believe you are right. I have travelled to dozens of different countries and the USA is the only one out of those to not have exit customs checks.

I know it's not quite the same thing, but most countries in the EU have no passport control upon exiting or entering the country as long as it's within the Schengen zone.

So France has basically no idea who shows up from Germany or leaves via Belgium. The countries on the external borders are supposed to handle all that.

Now I suppose it's possible there is a lot of data exchanged in real time and so on, but it's also possible that is a complete mess and nobody really knows anything, especially about citizens (GDPR).

It's far from the same thing. For all intents and purposes the Schengen Area works like a big country, regarding border control. That's like being surprised that Iowa doesn't check your passport when you head over into the neighboring US state :)

To the parent's point, though, passports ARE checked at the point you exit the Schengen area, whereas they're generally not when you leave the US.

They are checked by the foreign country though, not by the country you're leaving.

I have not crossed that many non-Schengen land borders, but as far as I remember it was the same every time, when going from France to England through the channel, Belgium to England by train, France to Switzerland (before Switzerland joined Schengen) and Canada to the US.

When flying from a Schengen area country to the US, border patrol on the departing side is entirely managed by that country. Often e.g. United-operated flights from larger European airports will have their own passport check, but that always happens after you pass through the departing country's passport control. At least, this is my personal experience flying between Germany and the US ~once a month.

I have been to a few airports where you explicitly clear US customs at the departing airport before leaving for the US — Vancouver, BC and Dublin Shannon come to mind.

If you've overstayed your automatic 90-day Schengen area travel visa, a common hack for backpackers and such is to intentionally leave the Schengen area from someplace like France that's generally less strict about counting exact days than many other EU countries.

To be fair, I don't have much experience flying from the Schengen area to non-Schengen area non-US countries. It's totally possible this is all rigamarole that the US government pressures other countries to do.

Over the past few years, I've flown in and out of the EU dozens of times. Every EU international airport I've flown out of has outbound passport control, operated by the local country, before you enter the international part of the terminal.

I fly between Germany and UK pretty frequently, and whilst the UK doesn't check the passport on the way out, Germany do check it on the way out (you get checked again when entering into UK).

I have heard of friends of friends who overstayed a visa and get found out on the exit gate (usually bringing a lawyer/embassy official to talk through things). This can lead to a (temporary?) travel ban to Germany and a fine.

Neither does Canada.

Most countries of the world have maximum visit lengths as part of a visitor visa.

And those maximum visit lengths are counted on an annual basis. So you can only visit the US 179 days out of 365.

So they need to know when you came in and when you left. It's not good enough to just leave and not tell anyone.

They don’t “need to know” for reasons which are of significant practical benefit to citizens/residents.

But institutions like governments only “see” via data collection, and in general are happy to collect whatever is technically and socially feasible, and people involved in setting up databases seldom stop to think about the risks or trade-offs involved in collecting various types of data, or whether that data is meaningful or useful. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

> They don’t “need to know” for reasons which are of significant practical benefit to citizens/residents.

Staying for more than six months is usually one of the main measures to determine if one is resident and should pay taxes in the country, so there is at least a very good reason (although I don't know how much this applies to the USA specifically).

Anyone who earns income working in the USA has to pay US income and payroll taxes.

you pay income tax in the country you live, not where you work (i.e. if you were employed by a US company, but working remotely in the UK, you'd pay income tax in the UK)

Any country can try to extract any tax from anyone it likes, and in general the US does.

Except if you are working for a company that is sending you to the US (your company makes the income). It's easy to argue for 2-3 weeks, harder to argue for over 2 months.

It seems to me that being opposed to someone breaking the law is not equivalent to being a sadistic xenophobe.

Finding people who rob banks at some point and punishing them is of great interest to people fearful of robbers who like disrupting robbers’ lives for no practical purpose because they gain sadistic satisfaction from cruelly exercising power over other people.

I think the robbers argument isn't directly applicable because mere physical presence without committing a crime doesn't hurt anyone -- does it? I think Congress for all its flaws agrees, as simply being present and out of status in the US isn't a criminal matter, it's civil, and congress has repeatedly, and even recently, refused to change that classification.

You punish a robber ostensibly to stop them from robbing again, lest you end up the victim of a robbery. What does being the victim of someone's unlawful presence even mean?

Their "mere physical presence" after their visa has expired is the crime.

There is nothing unique about the US in that regard. Most countries have a limit on how long you can visit.

No, it's not a criminal matter, it's a civil matter. It's illegal in the same way as parking somewhere you're not supposed to. Not everything that's illegal is a crime. "It is generally accurate that the simple act of being in the United States illegally is not, by itself, a crime. Rather, it’s a civil violation that puts the individual at risk for deportation, but not for criminal prosecution." [1]

This isn't always a good thing, of course, as there's less due process involved in handling such situations. Unlawful entry is a misdemeanor, lying to a border guard is a crime, and unlawful re-entry after deportation can be, also.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/mar/15/fl...

Ok, point withdrawn. Overstaying a visa is not a criminal offense. That's a new one for me. Thanks.

I think your "who is hurt" approach is weak though.

If a country can't enforce its own laws - or worse selectively enforces them - no one is obviously "hurt" but it erodes trust in the systems and process itself. It leaves everything up to the judgement of the people on the ground and damages the concept of equality under the law. It's a dangerous game to play.

Yeah, I agree with you about law enforcement, particularly selective law enforcement. It is indeed a dangerous game to play, and while definitely a left-leaning individual I just can't get behind the whole "abolish ICE" thing. I do think that immigration laws in the US are absurdly strict and I have a hard time buying the "America's Full" argument. That said, while laws exist on the books they should be enforced.

I was suggesting one has a clear victim and the other doesn't so it may not be directly comparable. The "who's hurt" question was something I'm curious the consensus answer to rather than an excuse for not enforcing the law.

> I just can't get behind the whole "abolish ICE" thing.

Not saying one way or another, but the argument is that ICE was only formed 16 years ago and that the U.S. was not 'overrun' before then. The Border Patrol etc. would still remain, just the Stasi-like tactics of removing people from their homes in the middle of the night and holding people in cages would disappear.

At least that's how I've heard the argument.

ICE was the merger of numerous things, including the INS which pre-dates WW2 making it older than the Air Force, Department of Ed, and dozens of other government agencies.

Saying "only formed 16 years ago" is only right among the "well, actually" crowd.

The problem is that a merge increases the centralization of power and the ability to abuse that power with impunity. ICE was only formed 16 years ago as this sort of centralized organization. That is different than going via multiple separate entities, each of which have their own checks and balances, oversight and even internal politics that make it less likely widespread abuse would pass all the links in the chain untamed. That is gone.

The difference in 'effectiveness' is sort of like the difference between the reach of the LAPD intelligence arm vs the CIA.

So that next time chatmasta comes back, you know when he left. Otherwise how do you know how long he stayed in the country, and therefore how many days he should be allowed on this next visit? Currently, I assume the countries without exit controls have access to the entry databases of the destination countries, so they forego exit controls as redundant.

> Currently, I assume the countries without exit controls have access to the entry databases of the destination countries

I believe the US exit controls are currently based on airline passenger manifests (not entry databases of other countries).

Borders are different. There is a right to free movement within a country. Not so across borders.

There are numerous countries without unlimited right of free movement. China, Burma, and (to a much lesser extent) India come to mind.

Also de facto limitations in highly violent places like Syria, parts of Iraq, Somalia et al, but I assume you were referring to a de jure right

I don't know if they still do it, but in the 90s if you drove between provinces in Egypt there were police checkpoints reviewing ID, reason for travel and levying a fee although I don't know how official that last part was.

There is a right to free movement in the country because it would be impractical to check movements of people at this level of granularity.

With this development of technology, it becomes possible to even check who is crossing your neighborhood, and you may lose your freedom inside your own country, if a government decided to go in that direction

I can. If someone commits a crime in the country and then they leave, then it's important to stop them. In Australia, a number of men have kidnapped their children and so knowing they were leaving would have prevented them from leaving with the children illegally.

North Korea has an exit visa, and the associated processes.

Obviously a great country to emulate.