U.S. Customs at Dublin Airport

Shannon, Ireland

Aruba

Freeport and Nassau, Bahamas

Bermuda

Abu Dhabi, UAE

Eight airports in Canada.

Complete list is available here:

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

US Passport control and also customs? Good news. We have done this in Canada.

We returned to the US from France via Dublin a couple of years ago, and it was definitely great going through customs and immigration in Dublin. We checked our bags through from France, and didn't see them in Dublin except on a screen. As a bonus, the US Customs/Border Patrol person was very friendly; he was an American who had to commit to 5 years in Dublin, and his main complaint was the price of Guinness in the pubs in Dublin.

I LOVED being able to pre-clear customs in Dublin. The security guy was nice! (He laughed at me for saying that I took one bite of the haggis and gave the rest to my other half, but it was a laugh with me, not at me type thing.)

We did the same thing with pre-clearance flying back through Calgary, and again - really nice people! I wish domestic airports were this friendly when returning to the US.

Yep, this is called US preclearance!

I will say that preclearance is not a positive for me, although I 100% understand its benefits (allows easier US domestic connections, allows airlines to serve LGA and DCA with domestic flights).

As I live in New York, and previously in Los Angeles, I am almost never making an onward domestic connection in the US, so I have to collect my bags at the New York airport of entry anyway, and I'm not worried about the length of immigration lines at the US arrival airport since that's my final destination.

Plus, especially on short weekend trips to Canada, I'd rather have more time in the weekend destination, but having to allot extra time for preclearance at the Canadian airport means an earlier trip to the airport on the last day of the trip and less time on vacation (whereas since I live in NYC the time spent lining up at JFK is not a big deal to me.)

Basically, if you don't make a lot of onward US domestic connections and don't check bags, I'm not sure that preclearance is really a net benefit for you in that case. However, I realize that this is largely not the case from Europe (most US travelers have to connect to their final US destination, and most people are checking bags) so it of course makes sense why it exists.

I am not sure I follow the logic of that last post.

We live in Philadelphia, arrive here directly (usually) and do NOT have checked bags. The ability to walk off the plane and out to our awaiting surface transit if we went through pre-clearance is a savings of up to an hour.. If we were coming from Canada (and had not driven there), this would still be a large savings as we could leave Canada later and not be delayed leaving Philly International.

The ability to walk off the plane and out to our awaiting surface transit if we went through pre-clearance is a savings of up to an hour..

Precisely. The time we spent waiting to get through preclearance in Dublin was time we would have spent waiting anyway in between flights. So we lost no time there, and saved the time we would have lost waiting at customs and immigration in Boston.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I'm firmly on the side of the pre-clearance being a great convenience - I had spent the night in Dublin, had gotten to the airport 3 hours early, as I generally would for an international flight, and had no trouble whatsoever getting though everything in time, then enjoyed being able to stroll from one gate to the other, hoopla-free, in Philadelphia. One hint for pre-clearance: at one point, you put your passport in a machine, answer some questions, let the machine take your picture, and receive a piece of paper with the picture and info on it. You have to show the paper to several people. HANG ON TO IT UNTIL YOU'RE AT YOUR GATE.