While border control in the United States has become stricter year by year under the Trump Administration’s policies, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, is implementing Trusted Traveler Programs, or TTP, to alleviate long waiting lines at U.S. airport security checkpoints by granting eligibility for fast lanes to relatively low-risk travelers. Since most of these programs, such as TSA PreCheck, are open only to U.S. citizens, non-U.S. citizens like me receive no benefits from them. The Global Entry Program, however, allows even non-U.S. citizens to qualify for expedited processing equivalent to TSA PreCheck, provided they are nationals of DHS-approved countries. Earlier this year, I saw a post on Facebook announcing that Japan had been added to the list of eligible countries. That prompted me to apply for the program. Being approved for Global Entry not only makes my travel within the United States more convenient; it also means receiving an official endorsement from the U.S. government that I am a trustworthy individual.

To apply for the Global Entry Program, you must be 14 years old or older. You must have no previous conviction records. If you meet all these conditions, the first thing you must do is visit the TTP website at ttp.cbp.dhs.gov and create a login account if you don’t have one. Once you create a login account, you can log in to the website and apply for the Global Entry Program. At first, you should provide your information, such as your passport number, expiration date, residential address, and employer information, in the Global Entry web form, and pay $120 online as an application fee (you don’t have to pay any application fee if you are 14–17 years of age). Once you complete this process, if you are a citizen of Japan, you will be instructed to retrieve your family register (KOSEKI ZENBUJIKO SHOMEISHO or KOSEKI TOHON) from the city/ward/town/village office and send it by registered mail to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau. Weeks later, you will receive an email from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stating your TTP application status has changed to “conditionally approved.” Then all your course of action is to have a person-to-person interview with a CBP officer to complete the GE Program enrollment. This final interview is normally conducted at a major airport in the United States or some exceptional out-of-the-U.S. interview sites, but luckily, I got an email saying that the CBP would be hosting the Tokyo Global Entry Event in the week from April 13 to 17, where CBP officers would come to Shinagawa Prince Hotel of Tokyo to conduct final interviews for the GE applicants living in Japan, upon booking of the time slot of appointment on the TTP website.

I booked 11:30 am on Wednesday, April 15, and went to the Shinagawa Prince Hotel that day.

The interview venue was a small banquet room on the third floor of the hotel. A young Japanese man took care of visitors, guiding them to the waiting seats and the interview counters. There were two interview counters, one of which an American officer sat at, interviewing in English. At the other counter, a Japanese inspector was conducting interviews in Japanese. When I arrived at the venue, there were two applicants being interviewed at the counters. I waited to be served at the waiting seat behind them. After about five minutes, an applicant at the Japanese officer’s counter completed the interview and left the counter; I was guided to his counter. It was lucky that I didn’t need to use any English throughout the interview.

The inspector, opening a laptop with a monitor facing him, first told me to show my passport, so I handed it to him. He looked at my passport and checked the information against what was probably displayed on his laptop (I couldn’t see what it was, because the laptop’s monitor wasn’t visible to me). He took a small webcam-like camera and told me to take off my glasses and look at the lens. I did what he told me, and he took some of my pictures. He then put a portable fingerprint scanner connected to the laptop on the desk and told me to place my right four fingers, right thumb, left four fingers, and left thumb on the scanner in turn. I did so. After that, he asked me some oral questions about my current residential address, my employer, and the place in the U.S. I was planning to visit. I said that I was planning to visit Iowa in September. He asked me why. For a moment, I was at a loss as to how to answer his question, but I told him that every year at the cultural festival of Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, I had seen exhibits about homestay programs in Iowa, which had made me want to go there myself. It was fortunate that everything could be conducted in Japanese, as it made my explanation much easier. He seemed satisfied, returned my passport to me, explained the next steps, and concluded the interview. The whole process took only about five minutes.

Hardly had I left the venue when I got an email. It said that my application status had been changed. While visiting the TTP website dashboard on my smartphone, I saw that the application status had changed to Approved.

I was told that Global Entry membership cards are not issued to Japanese applicants, so that marked the completion of the entire application process. From now until my passport expires, I’m granted expedited processing when entering the United States because the U.S. government has evaluated me as a trusted person.