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Expat self-service immigration expanded
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THE immigration inspection station at Shanghai Pudong International Airport yesterday expanded its self-service entry inspection channels to foreigners holding electronic passports who have residence permits for six months or longer.
Previously, only registered flight crew members and expats holding permanent Chinese residence permits could enjoy the service, which takes about 10 seconds for each passenger.
But first-time users must have their passports registered and their fingerprints and facial image entered into the computer system when entering China by air. This can be done at the immigration inspection station at the airport.
They can then go to any one of the 27 electronic channels, each of which has two gates. They will first have their passports scanned, which will open the first gate, and the second gate will open when their fingerprints and faces are electronically recognized.
Naeim Mahavi, who arrived from Canada, was among the first to use the self-service system yesterday and he was very pleased with it as it’s much quicker than the traditional inspection procedures, which involves queuing for a face-to-face with an immigration official.
“It’s a very good system for most foreigners,” he said. “We don’t have to line up for half an hour or sometimes one hour and just come straight. It’s very convenient,” he said.
The self-service system, which is only for adults, was introduced in 2010 for Hong Kong and Macau residents and then gradually expanded to include mainlanders and Taiwan residents, as well as foreigners with permanent residence permits and flight crews. This year, 12 new channels were established in Terminal 1 and the average daily number of e-channel users increased to 7,000 from 3,000 last year, said the immigration inspection station, adding that more than 1 million passengers have used the e-channels in the first half of this year.
Shanghai General Station of Immigration Inspection says that it will more broadly adopt the e-channel system once it is perfected to accommodate the rising number of travelers arriving in the city.
A total of 28.5 million travelers have entered or departed from Shanghai in the first half of this year, up 15 percent over last year, said the SGSII.
The number for the whole year is expected to exceed 40 million, a significant increase over last year’s 37.5 million and double the number of visitors 10 years ago, it added.
The 144-hour visa-exemption transit policy is also gaining popularity, with more than 15,000 foreign visitors taking advantage of it over the past six months, a 60 percent increase over the same period of last year when visitors were only granted 72 hours, said the general station.
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