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Comment by fastaguy88 | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be some confusion about precheck. Most people get precheck by doing “global entry”, which dramatically shortens the time required for US citizens to re-enter the US. Pre-check is a side benefit of global entry. Global entry pre-dates precheck.

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Out of curiosity do you have stats on that? Until recently 100% of the people I knew with precheck don’t have global entry. Right now global entry interviews can be over a year out.

Getting an interview for global entry is actually pretty easy, you can just do it on the return leg of international travel with no appointment needed.

Can you elaborate on this process?

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/trusted-traveler-programs/global-...

When you enter customs upon re-entry to the US there's a sign for a place where they'll do your interview real quick before letting you go. The downside (IIRC) is that you don't get your number for precheck either until you do this, so if you only do international travel 1-2 times per year you might want to find an interview time.

When I’m on my way back from an international location the last thing I want to do is sit in a TSA office and answer questions about my identity.

But, then again, I lucked out - TSA came to my work and did interviews there. Kind of weird but it got me in with little hassle.

When I’m on my way back from an international location the last thing I want to do is sit in a TSA office and answer questions about my identit

Well you're in luck - it's not TSA that interviews you, it's CPB!

Seems to be roughly even, with somewhat more TSA PreCheck-only members than Global Entry members (including NEXUS and SENTRI).

As of March 2023, TSA said [1]: "TSA PreCheck® application program has surpassed 15 million active members" and "Thirty-two million travelers now benefit from TSA PreCheck expedited screening after being vetted though TSA PreCheck ®, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry or another federal vetting program."

As of September 2023, CBP announced stated that there were over 12 million Global Entry members in a press release. [2]

This appears to include SENTRI and NEXUS members, since as of July 2022 it was stated: [3] "There are over 7.6 million participants enrolled directly in Global Entry, and over 1.8 million members of NEXUS and SENTRI that also receive Global Entry benefits."

[1] https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/03/02/tsa-prech...

[2] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-anno...

[3] https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/202...

"Most people get precheck by doing “global entry”"

Citation needed. At least in my anecdotal experience, very few people I know have Global Entry while very many people I know have Precheck

You can get PreCheck separately. I got PreCheck and Global Entry as a side benefit of Nexus. Which, btw, is the cheapest way to get them all.

You have to travel to the the northern border to get Nexus right?

I got (Global Entry, Sentri, Precheck) since I live near the southern border.

Right, you need a place that has Canadian border agents as well.

Seatac airport used to have this, but I think that was stopped during COVID and never restarted.

Seatac never had it. You actually had to go to Boeing field. That's where I got mine.

Correct. The interview locations are all along the northern border.

Nexus also allows you to use Sentri lanes when crossing the Mexican border.

By the way, I forgot another side benefit of Nexus (and Sentri, I think): your Nexus card qualifies as a Real ID, so no need to upgrade your state ID when that requirement comes into effect for air travel.

As others have pointed out, that's not really all that much more common. Another reason for it is I believe that Global Entry and Nexus both still have a blanket "no criminal convictions of any kind at any time" requirement... which rules out something like 25-30% of the US population. Precheck also has a criminal background check but it isn't immediately disqualifying in all cases.

Wait, you're saying that 25-30% of the US population have a criminal conviction? That seems extremely high, no?

Yeah, I think that was a general estimate I found some supporting research for a few years back when I looked into it a bit, and I've seen similar quoted elsewhere.

It's not easy to come up with an accurate number at all due to all the different state systems not being perfectly comparable, treating different things in different ways, and duplicating individuals who have convictions in more than one state. Even attempts to link them together have been incomplete and inaccurate.

I'm not particularly surprised at that level, though... it's going to include _lots_ of low-level things that are technically classified criminal even though they're often just a ticket: kids caught with beer at a party, speeding in areas that have a "20 over the limit" rule that automatically upgrades to a higher offense, failure to pay tickets that gets escalated to a court, etc...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00490...) suggest that in 2017, 8% of the US adult population had a felony conviction, 24% of Black adults, and 33% of Black males. But for TSA Pre/Global entry, the relevant number is the number of fliers, where I suspect the felony rates are lower.

This is definitely not true. Most people do pre-check and not global entry. Most people care about traveling domestically much more than internationally and the process is longer for approval

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