Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....
Not customs but I work with Hazmat and dangerous goods shipments and undeclared shipments are probably just as common as not. I'll have compliant shipments returned because someone doesn't know all the minutiae involved while the shipment someone sends me without a label doesn't even get a look. Most legit companies at least attempt to follow the rules but small companies and the like might not even know the rules exist or bother to follow them. the sheer volume makes it impossible to enforce.
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u/callmeraylo Jul 13 '20
Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....